Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[ModlrMike]

Deny our impact? Hurt your grandchildren and their children.

I don't deny our impact, I dispute the extent that climate alarmists claim. That being said, I refuse to sit in my cold, dark house in a -40 Winnipeg winter because some self righteous tw*t in California says it's good for the planet.

 

[Journeyman]

I don't deny our impact, I dispute the extent that climate alarmists claim. That being said, I refuse to sit in my cold, dark house in a -40 Winnipeg winter because some self righteous tw*t in California says it's good for the planet.

Exactly.  I have no doubt that the climate, writ large, is changing.  I do have doubts as to how much panicking is required.

Right now, I'm very much in the "don't care" camp. 

Fortunately, there appears to be lots of folks willing to wring their hands and gnash their teeth on my behalf.

 

[Sub_Guy]

Deny our impact? Hurt your grandchildren and their children.

Here is the problem.

Canada and its emissions could disappear off the face off the planet, and nothing will change, that is a hard fact.  If we are impacting climate change, then the huge emitters have to cut back (USA, China, India, etc), the smaller countries are just along for the ride.

Most of our energy already comes from green sources anyway, combine that with the size of our forests we probably could be considered a carbon neutral country.

 

[GAP]

Global warming will end life on earth (but don't panic, you've got 3.5bn years left!)

    University of East Anglia scientists predict the Sun will wipe out all life on the planet
    The celestial body will heat up so much that Earth will no longer be the right temperature to support life
    But current 'goldilocks' conditions will last for at least another 1.75bn years

By Fiona Macrae Science Correspondent  18 September 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2424741/Global-warming-end-life-earth-dont-panic-youve-got-3-5bn-years-left.html

The end of the world is not nigh. Life will thrive on Earth for at least another 1.75billion years and perhaps as many as 3.5billion.

Beyond then, the Sun will have become so hot that nothing will be able to survive, scientists believe.

Ever since it was formed our planet has been at just the right distance from the Sun to make it habitable.

Being in this ‘Goldilocks’ zone has allowed oceans to develop in temperatures neither too hot to boil the water away, or too cold to freeze it into permanent ice.

The problem is, however, that stars become hotter over time, ensuring that the habitable period cannot last.

As the stars emit more heat, any surface water on nearby planets dries up and without water nothing can survive.

At this point, the Earth will have ‘moved’ out of the habitable zone even though its position will be exactly the same.

The prediction comes from experts at the University of East Anglia, who believe the world can expect between 6.3billion and 7.8billion years of ‘Goldilocks’ conditions from its birth around 4.55billion years ago.

That means there can only be 1.75billion to 3.5billion years of life left. Andrew Rushby, a researcher at the university, said: ‘After this point, the Earth would be in the hot zone of the Sun, with temperatures so high that the seas would evaporate.
more on link

 

[Haletown]

Meanwhile, in Australia . . .

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Again and again, face the facts people. There is serious global climate disruptions and environmental damages. End story. All this blither and blather about "we once thought the earth was flat.."

Guess what? Allan Savory brought that one up in one of his presentations. Lets do a paradigm shift here. How about all you people in denial that there is nothing wrong with MANs impact on the earth are the ones that have "the world is flat" mindset. Its you people that will hopefully wake up one day and see things for what they are.

I have stated these things before and I will re-emphasize them here again (my beliefs)
-People choose to believe what they want to (not what really is in front of them)
-We, mankind, must first acknowledge the problem (its really one problem at a whole, MANs negative impact on the earth)
-We do not need to PANIC and over react or make knee jerk reactions. We need very well thought out solutions that will work for a sustainable future and these solutions can be implemented in a short, medium and long term basis
-There is corporate and other interest in NOT changing things for the better (As an example how long did Tobacco companies ignore or deny that cigarettes were damaging to people's health? I am sure there are loads of Petrol, Industrial agriculture, manufacturing, large scale fishing that do not want to change)

Deny our impact? Hurt your grandchildren and their children.

Excuse me there Oh High & Mighty One, but I think you're way off....

If you've read some of the commentary here from the skeptics, it's not "Oh, we don't want to spend money on environmental issues." 

It's "Global Warming is a giant scam and a tremendous waste of funds that could be used for better things."

So ask me if I want to spend a $1 billion per annum on bird-chopping windmills and CO2 credits to China or if I'd like it to go to habitat preservation and waste water treatment and you'll get my response any time.

On top of that, I'm actually okay if we increase environmental spending.

I just don't want it to go to some of these big conglomerates who are also responsible for bulldozing rainforests so they can build "renewable bio diesel" plantations and the massive of expansion of GMO food without proper testing.

So before you try to paint all of us skeptics with such a wide and evil brush, you better be sure to listen to what we're arguing for and against. 



Matthew.

 

[Kirkhill]

:goodpost:

 

[ModlrMike]

Allow me to add a little fuel to the fire:


Efficient lighting equals higher heat bills: study

The original study (PDF file)
Benchmarking of energy savings associated with energy efficient lighting in houses

 

[ArmyRick]

Wind Turbines? Don't agree. 100% against them. NOT ONCE DID I PROMOTE THEM.

Carbon Credits? Absolutely useless. Basically permission to be destructive if you have enough money. NOT ONCE DID I PROMOTE THEM.

Yes, Canada could eliminate all of its combustion engines and other carbon source engines and not put but a tiny dent in the world of carbon emissions. However, auto and engine emissions are not even at the top of the dirty list.

I also, time and time again, say gradual changes. I also said, first step is acknowledging the problem. So what are the things I would like to see done?
-Clean up and stop "chemical" cropping in Agriculture. Its very expensive, destructive and causes massive carbon loss. Phase in better alternatives over a 10-30 year period (Canada has some very massive farms)
-Clean up and stop Concentrated Animal feed operations in Agriculture. Its very polluting, extremely hard on animals and again, lots of nasty pollution. Some of you have read about my farm work (there are more and more of us popping up).
-Reduce or eliminate the subsidies for large scale farm operations as mentioned in the first two. That would be a riot! No one would pay $12 a pound for feedlot hamburger and $4 for chemical tomato.
-Encourage new technologies such as hybrid engines or more electric cars. Maybe even government tax break for doing so.
-Encourage more aggressive use of solar power. The sun shines every day and its a simple and easy way to harness energy. Again, there should be tax breaks for doing so.
-Get rid of wind turbines. Google it and you will find a massive list of not good things about wind turbines. We have plenty in my neighbourhood and nobody wants them
-Clear cut patches of massive dense over grown forest in this country. What the hell are you on, Rick? Wait for it. Harvest the wood for useful stuff, leave firebreaks and then when major forest fires breakout, hopefully reduce spread of forest fire. A major forest fire puts HUGE amounts of carbon. If we thin out the forest or leave open trails, could slow down the spread of fire. Not to mention, allow hunters, trappers, snowmobilers, etc a trail through these woods or even allow some savanah grasslands in the thick forest. Maybe get large herds of elk and bison to maintain them. Hunters like this idea? Remember dense thick grassland sequesters carbon back to the soil.
-Discourage large scale fishing operations or encourage sustainable fish farming operations with complete built in mini-eco systems

Thats just a few ideas right there. There are loads of them. You think I am on some sort of high and mighty moral mountain? Sorry, I am a very humble man. However I am always been well known, in military and civilian life, for acknowledging the problem at hand. Note my previous post, we do not need to panic, over react or make knee jerk reactions. We need good minds to come up with long term solutions. And there is probably $$$ to made in doing so.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

ArmyRick,

You railed against everyone who was a Global Warming Skeptic as flat-earth proponents and basically painted us all as 'bad guys'.

If that is not your position and you are open to those of who question the net benefit of "Global Warming Policies" such as carbon credits to China, wind turbines, etc. in contrast to re-allocation to a "Clean Lakes & Rivers" program, a dramatic increase in the amount of protected green space both urban and rural, and expansion of Provincial & National Parks, etc. then I think you need to re-state your position....because your opening rant which I replied to sounded NOTHING like that.


Matthew.

 

[a_majoor]

The IPCC is finally forced to admit the obvious, but cannot explain what is happening or why. This is ironic since they were able to "explain" every climate and weather anomily when the claim was the temperature was rising; obviously the science is not settled, and I would welcome some real climate science so stupit s**t like the global warming alarmism does not happen again and we can start to understand what is really going on. Sadly, the alarmists have probably damaged the credibility of climactic studies for a generation.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/09/the-climate-change-report-will-confirm.html#more

The Climate change report will confirm that the rate of warming has slowed or been flat since 1998

Climatologists and climate-change deniers agree on at least one thing this week: everyone is awaiting the landmark U.N. report on climate change that will be presented at next week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report will also include data that indicates the rate of warming from 1998 to 2012 slowed to about half the average rate since 1951, citing natural variability in the climate system, as well as cooling effects from volcanic eruptions and a downward phase in solar activity.

What won't be there is a more thorough explanation for the supposed decline in warming.

The lack of warming data has been around for a while.

 

[GAP]

Don't you just love the comforting, supportive environmentalist community....... :

Jail leaders who question climate change: Suzuki
September 24, 2013 13:03
Video Link

In an interview in Australia, David Suzuki said that politicians who deny climate change chould be jailed for criminal negligence.

 

[Journeyman]

Don't you just love the comforting, supportive environmentalist community....... :

Only varying in degree from the 2 or 3 "I'm right and everyone else is an idiot" Army.ca poster.  :boring:



I guess they're not happy with Margaret Wendt's Globe & Mail post today.....

A funny thing happened since that blockbuster UN report in 2007 called for urgent action on global warming. The world stopped warming up.

This fact is a monumental PR headache for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is set to issue the first part of its next report on Friday. It’s hard to call for urgent action when nothing much is happening.

Rest of comment at link

 

[a_majoor]

St David of Suzuki reveals his true worth as a "scientist" who supports and promots the "consensus": he has no idea of what he is talking about. I suspect that the thousands of "scientists" who signed on to say the support the consensus are equally ignorant of the actual facts, and since science is all about examining the facts and using them to make and test hypothesis against the real world, most of these people deserve to be stripped of their ability to call themselves scientists anymore:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/david_suzuki_proves_hes_pig_ignorant_about_global_warming/

David Suzuki proves he’s pig ignorant about global warming

Andrew Bolt
SEPTEMBER 24 2013
(2:52pm)

Global warming - propaganda, Interviews with warmists like Flannery

The very first question put to David Suzuki on Q&A last night revealed this warming alarmist’s complete ignorance of the most basic facts of global warming.

Fancy Suzuki not even knowing what the world’s main temperature data sets say about global temperatures. Fancy him not even knowing what those data sets are, even when he is given their names.

The only rational response to Suzuki’s astonishing admission of utter ignorance would have been to say to him: “Sir, you are a phony and imposter. Get off the stage and don’t waste our time for a second longer.”

Read the exchange for yourself:

BILL KOUTALIANOS: Oh, hi. Since 1998 global temperatures have been relatively flat, yet many man-made global warming advocates refuse to acknowledge this simple fact. Has man-made global warming become a new religion in itself?

TONY JONES: David, go ahead.

DAVID SUZUKI: Yeah, well, I don’t know why you’re saying that. The ten hottest years on record, as I understand it, have been in this century. In fact, the warming continues. It may have slowed down but the warming continues and everybody is anticipating some kind of revelation in the next IPCC reports that are saying we got it wrong. As far as I understand, we haven’t. So where are you getting your information? I’m not a climatologist. I wait for the climatologists to tell us what they’re thinking.

TONY JONES: Do you want to respond to that, Bill?

BILL KOUTALIANOS: Sure, yeah. UAH, RSS, HadCRUT, GISS data shows a 17-year flat trend which suggests there may be something wrong with the Co2 warming theory?

DAVID SUZUKI: Sorry, yeah, what is the reference? I don’t…

BILL KOUTALIANOS: Well, they’re the main data sets that IPCC use: UAH, University of Alabama, Huntsville; GISS, Goddard Institute of Science; HadCRUT. I don’t know what that stands for, HadCRUT; and RSS, Remote Sensing something. So those data sets suggest a 17-year flat trend, which suggests there may be a problem with the Co2.

DAVID SUZUKI: No, well, there may be a climate sceptic down in Huntsville, Alabama, who has taken the data and come to that conclusion. I say, let’s wait for the IPCC report to come out and see what the vast bulk of scientists who have been involved in gathering this information will tell us.

See those data sets here.

Like I say, a complete know-nothing, citing false claims:

STEWART FRANKS: In an opinion piece last week you wrote that the Great Barrier Reef was threatened by the increasing frequency of cyclones. Everyone watching and listening can onto the Bureau of Meteorology’s website and see that there is no increase. In fact there has been a decline over the last 40 years and no increase in the severity. Are you not, by exaggerating…

DAVID SUZUKI: That I have to admit…

STEWART FRANKS: ...or even just getting wrong, are you not actually vulnerable of actually undermining your very own aim in that, you know, the Great Barrier Reef does have environmental threat, but cyclones ain’t one of them?

DAVID SUZUKI: All right. That was one, I have to admit, that that was suggested to me by an Australian, and it is true, I mean, it may be a mistake. I don’t know.

Nor does David Suzuki know what the hell he’s on about when he’s fear-mongering about genetically modified crops:

DAVID SUZUKI: Well, I mean, that is always the argument that’s made. GMOs are very, very expensive. Now, the people that need this food are not going to be able to afford it. Are we going to just create these new crops and then give them away? I simply don’t believe that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t think it is a generosity for the rest of humanity that is driving this activity.

RICK ROUSH: Actually, we are. I mean, Bt corn technology has been given away to the Kenyan State Government research people for use for subsistence farmers. Monsanto gave away insect resistant potatoes in Mexico over 20 years ago. James is working on lots of similar cases. In cases where there is no economic return, it is, in fact, being given away and they’re not so difficult to develop. When I was at Cornell, we got a gene that was a gift from Monsanto for experimental purposes. We made broccoli plants that were resistant to attacks of Dimebag Moths. A student - one of our students made about 50 transformants in about six months. The great cost of these things are no longer the actual creation of the plant. It’s the regulatory challenges to take sure that you can take them to market, to do all that safety testing.

TONY JONES: Okay, Rick, well we’ll get a response to that and we’ll move on?

DAVID SUZUKI: Well, I don’t have any response. It sounds great. I don’t know.

How in God’s name could people take this man seriously?

Best part about the Internet age: this sort of evidence stays around forever, so the next time St David opens his mouth....

 

[Nemo888]

 

[ModlrMike]

Really? Who's using a strawman now?

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Seriously? That's your argument?

:rofl:


Talk about the desperation of hoping the sinking ship will get you to the shore :

 

[Haletown]

AR5 SPM . . .  The Coles notes version.

"Ross McKitrick says:
September 27, 2013 at 5:32 am
SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/#more-94762

 

[Kilo_302]

Here's another series of arguments debunking the typical denial claims, many of which have been posted on this thread:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/09/top-climate-myths-ipcc

"The IPCC's leaked draft report says scientists have "low confidence" in their understanding of what's going on with Antarctic sea ice. It also predicts, with "low confidence," that this ice too will decline by the end of the century. In other words: Antarctica is complicated, remote, and little understood.

All of which, incidentally, highlights why you should trust scientists on climate change: They know what they don't know and are honest about it, as the Antarctica case shows. That's why, when they express 95 percent confidence that humans are driving global warming (in the same report that confesses a relative lack of understanding of what's happening with Antarctic sea ice), it is worth paying attention."

 

[Nemo888]

This thread is one of the saddest on this site.  I can't think of a single prominent scientist still in the denial camp. Even the guys working for the Heartland Institute have quit and jumped ship. No one with an academic background disputes this anymore. Only the USA is in denial of climate change. This tiny echo chamber is becoming more shrill as more and more people file out to join the scientific consensus.

Good luck staying immune to facts forever.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/09/ipcc-climate-change-report

It's still our fault
Sep 27th 2013, 10:40 by J.P. | STOCKHOLM

IT HAS been a long time coming. But then the fifth assessment of the state of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, was a behemoth of an undertaking. It runs to thousands of pages, involved hundreds of scientists and was exhaustively checked and triple-checked by hundredds of other boffins and government officials to whom they report—and whose policies are often based on what they read. The first tranche of the multi-volume report—an executive summary of the physical science—was released in Stockholm on September 27th. And it is categorical in its conclusion: climate change has not stopped and man is the main cause.

It may be the last report of its kind: a growing chorus of experts thinks a more frequent, less bally-hooed and more up-to-date assessments would be more useful. It is certainly the first since negotiations for a global treaty reining in carbon emissions collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009; the first since questions were raised about the integrity of the IPCC itself following mistaken claims about the speed of glacier melt in the Himalayas and, most important, the first since evidence became incontrovertible that global surface air temperatures have risen much less quickly in the past 15 years than the IPCC had expected. A lot is riding on its findings, from the public credibility of climate science to the chances of a new global treaty.

The report is more definitive than in the past about the role of people in causing climate change. It say that it is "extremely likely"—IPCC speak for having a probability of over 95%—that man is responsible. This contrasts with the tentative tone of the early IPCC reports. “The observed increase [in surface air temperatures] could be largely due to this natural variability,” said the first one, in 1990. The next report in 1995 merely suggested a link between rising temperatures and human activity. That link was deemed “likely” (which means probability of 66%) in 2001, and “very likely” (90%) in 2007.

The latest iteration identifies radiative forcing, the difference between the amount of heat coming into the climate and the amount reflected back, as the immediate cause of warming. Radiative forcing is expressed in watts per square metre (W/m2), a unit of energy. A rise indicates that heat is building up in the system.

Total radiative forcing from man-made sources since 1750 (ie, before industrialisation) has risen from 0.29-0.85W/m2 in 1950 to 0.64-1.86W/m2 in 1980 to 1.13-3.33W/m2 in 2011. The average has jumped from 0.57 to 1.25 to 2.29, respectively—a four-fold increase in 60 years. The big change recently, the report points out, is that the cooling effect of aerosols seems to have been less strong than it used to be. But there is no sign that the rise in radiative forcing has slowed during the past 15 years of flat surface temperatures. The best estimate for total man-made radiative forcing in 2011 is 43% above 2005 levels.

Of course, more heat does not necessarily equal perceptible climate change. The IPCC admits the pause in the rise of surface air temperatures is real. “The rate of warming over the past 15 years,” it says, “[is] 0.05ºC per decade...smaller than the rate calculated since 1951.” In its 2007 report the panel had said the rate of warming was 0.2ºC per decade in 1990-2005 (four times the current rate). It predicted that this would continue for the next two decades.

But it plays down the long-term significance of the shift, saying that “due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends.” The start of the recent 15-year trend, in 1998, was a year of a strong worldwide fluctutation in the climate known as El Niño. This produced a temperature spike.

Still, all the extra heat implied by higher radiative forcing has to go somewhere. It isn’t going into the air. It is possible that not all that much is going into the surface waters of the oceans, either. The report says that “it is about as likely as not that ocean heat content from 0-700 metres increased more slowly during 2003-2010 than during 1993-2002.” That only leaves one other heat sink: the deep oceans below 700 metres, where it could be locked up in the deep oceans without affecting other parts of the climate.

And indeed, most of the extra heat does go into the oceans, which is not surprising given that they cover two thirds of Earth’s surface and have a much greater capacity to absorb heat than the air does. “Ocean warming,” the report says, “is largest near the surface and the upper 75 metres warmed by 0.11ºC per decade over the period 1971-2010.” It adds that more than 60% of the net energy increase in the climate system is stored in the upper ocean (0-700 metres)...and about 30% is stored in the ocean below 700 metres.

In fact, vasty deeps are a plausible candidate to explain the pause in surface air temperatures. The trouble is that measurements deep down, while improving, remain patchy. The IPCC says that it is likely that the ocean warmed from 3,000 metres to the bottom in 1992-2005 and that heat will penetrate from the surface down. Moreover, in a report earlier this month in Nature (published too late to make it into the IPCC report), Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, in San Diego, suggests that a cooling trend in an area of the eastern equatorial Pacific ocean may be “the cause of the pause”. But at the moment, this conclusion remains tentative.

Global warming is, then, continuing unabated in the watery world. It is not clear whether the trend itself has changed dramatically since 1990 or whether the rise is due to improved measurements, which have enabled scientists to gauge more exactly what has been going on. Probably the latter. The new assessment says that, since the fourth report in 2007, "instrumental biases in upper-ocean temperature records have been identified and reduced, enhancing confidence in the assessment of change."

Either way, the trend is worrying. Since water, like almost everything else, expands as it gets hotter, its rising temperature causes sea levels to rise. It is "very likely", the report adds, “that the mean rate of global averaged sea level rise was 1.7mm a year between 1901 and 2010, 2.0mm a year between 1971 and 2010 and 3.2mm a year between 1993 and 2010.” The rate of sea-level rise all but doubled between the start of the 20th century and its end. That is a significant change and one that the first IPCC assessment report in 1990 had little inkling of. That report reckoned that “the average rate of rise over the last 100 years has been 1.0-2.0 mm a year. There is no firm evidence of acceleration in sea level rise during this century.” The rate is now thought to be higher—and growing.

New instruments are providing better information about the rate at which ice sheets and glaciers are melting, too. In particular, the launch of the twin GRACE satellites has provided more detail about how much ice there actually is. GRACE, which stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, enables the mass of objects on Earth to be worked out more precisely by measuring tiny changes in their gravitation pull. The report says that “the average rate of ice loss from glaciers around the world, excluding glaciers on the periphery of the ice sheets, was very likely 226Gt [trillion tonnes] a year over the period 1971-2009 and very likely 275Gt a year over the period 1993-2009.”

In other words, it has speeded up. The Greenland ice sheet, the Antarctic sea ice and the Arctic sea ice have all lost mass (got thinner). The extent of the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by 3.5-4.1% a decade in 1979-2012, more than was estimated in 2007, and the summer sea-ice minimum is shrinking by about 10% a decade, though this year’s summer ice melt was smaller than last year’s.

What does that mean for the future? The report uses four new sets of scenarios for greenhouse-gas concentrations to claim that “global surface temperature change for the end of the 21st century is projected to be likely to exceed 1.5ºC relative to 1850 to 1900 in all but the lowest scenario considered, and likely to exceed 2ºC for the two high scenarios.” The 2ºC mark is widely considered to be the dividing line between warming which is just about tolerable and that which is dangerous.

For the first time, the IPCC gives some credence to the possibility that Earth’s climate may not be responding to higher concentrations of greenhouse gases quite as sharply as was once thought. The response is referred to as “equilibrium climate sensitivity” and defined as the rise in surface temperatures in the long term which accompanies a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In its previous report, the IPCC put this at between 2ºC and 4.5 ºC, with a most likely figure of 3ºC. But recent work, partly influenced by the pause in temperatures, has suggested sensitivity might be somewhat lower. The IPCC’s new range of 1.5-4.5ºC (the same as in its first report) reflects the new consensus (though some new research puts the upper bound of sensitivity below 4.5ºC).

The IPCC also decided to scrap its central “best guess”. Perhaps this is meant to reflect uncertainty in the science. If so, some scientists argue, then perhaps it should not have increased its confidence that man is the main cause of global warming.

In theory, a lower climate sensitivity means temperatures would rise more slowly for any given amount of extra radiative forcing. Earth might hence have a little more time to adjust to a changing climate. But whether such breathing space actually exists depends on how many tonnes of greenhouse gases people are putting into the atmosphere. So, for the first time, the IPCC has set what is usually called a carbon budget. To have a two-thirds chance of keeping global warming below 2ºC, it says, “will require cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources to stay between 0 and about 1,000 [trillion tonnes]”.

The world has already blown through just over half that amount (531 trillion tonnes) by 2011. At current rates of greenhouse-gas emission, the rest of the budget will have been spent before 2040. The odds of keeping the eventual rise in global temperatures to below 2ºC will lengthen—even if climate sensitivity is lower than was thought and even if the pause in surface air temperatures persists for a while. As Thomas Stocker, the co-chair of the report depressingly put it: “we are committed to climate change…for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 stop.”