Comments on: Why the new climate math is a declaration of war

By: Karen Orlando

Karen Orlando — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 21:49:00 +0000

The real issue is Bill Mckibben writing an essay based on people he works with or allies and the idea that oil change international is some kind of authority that the public should listen to. What was Oil Change International’s last report? The one about the natural gas pipelines in the united states that was “reported” on by allies over at desmog blog and I think picked up by the non-activist media?

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/07/22/planned-gas-pipeline-construction-east-coast-puts-climate-risk-report

The author of the report is basically a lifetime activist correct? Formerly of Greenpeace?

By: Will

Will — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 03:21:00 +0000

It has not yet dawned on people the implications of full, unmitigated global warming disaster. Add up the sufferings of human societies from all the wars in the past, then multiply by hundreds of times! Governments must do their utmost now to prevent this happening!

By: Steve Kretzmann

Steve Kretzmann — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 15:22:00 +0000

Karl Mathieson is right that our report, “The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production,” is based on a risk judgment. As implied by the title of the report, that risk judgement was made by world leaders in Paris last December, when nations of the world agreed to: “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels…”

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C” ≠ 50-50 chance.

Oil Change International ran the analysis based on a conservative interpretation of the meaning of the Paris Agreement. It would be reasonable to interpret the Paris language as demanding a 90% chance of staying below 2 °C rather than only a 66% chance, but it wouldn’t change the essential conclusion of the report that the expansion of the fossil fuel industry must stop as soon as possible.

The issue is not our colleagues at Carbon Tracker. Because their audience is large investors, it serves them to build their work off the analysis of a government-supported agency like the International Energy Agency (IEA). The problem is the IEA, whose supposedly climate-safe scenario only represents a flip-of-a-coin’s chance of staying below the upper limit of the Paris Agreement. The world deserves better odds than that.