Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Dr Rajendra Rachauri, said today in an interview with Agence France Presse reporter Marlowe Hood:
“As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations,” said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 parts per million (ppm).
“But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.”
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5 Comments
Here is a real human – caring, mindful of his responsibilities, but brave enough to voice his own opinion. A man to be respected and listened to. Anything less than a 350 target is just hoodwinking ourselves into believing that we are actually doing something meaningful. The time is rapidly approaching when we make a real commitment to pay for the consumerism of the past 50 years or the future of all humankind will be blighted by our greed for ever.
A 350 target is a nice goal from a theoretical viewpoint. But its like aiming for 1% unemployment, no child living in poverty and world peace. Those are all worthy goals and hopefully push the policy debate in the right direction, however if you say them loudly in public people stop taking you seriously and you lose your credibility.
Pointing to 350 ppm as an aspirational goal makes a 450 ppm target a more likely compromise. But to get back down to 350 ppm you’d have to reduce global population by a couple of billion and re-forest massive areas, stop burning anything (no more flying except in zepplins) and stop using steel/aluminium/cement/glass/plastic. Fortunately by reducing the population we could reduce the amount of fertilizer used to produce food, then we need to get rid of cattle and sheep.
The Malthusian principle[1] certainly looks like a goer. It’s a shame that we’re not really allowed to talk about it. It’s also a shame that when it is applied, it will be done so in an approximately random manner. [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
[2] It’s also interesting how the dickheads on climate change cage match essentially prevent the discussion from progressing beyond the very basics…
thanks anna. the science behind the 350 ppm CO2 target was set out in a classic 2008 artucle by James Hansen and eight other scirnbtists opubloished in tyhe ATMOSPHERIC sCDFIRMNCE zjOUIRNAL, 2008, 2 PAGES 217-31. iT CAN BE REASILY ACCESSED IN hANBSEN;SWEBSITE
Thanks Anna. The science behind the 350 ppm CO2 target was fully set out in a classic 2008 article by James Hansen and eight other eminent climate scientists ‘Target Atmospheric CO2 – Where should humanity aim?’,published in the Atmospheric Science Journal , 2008 , 2, pages 217-31. It can be readily accessed via Google on Hansen’s Columbia University website and is well worth reading. Also I have tried to summarise its main conclusions in my new book ‘Crunch Time – Using and Abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era’, pages 118-122 (which will be released on 15 September).
CO2 targets are simple and easy for everyone to understand. CO2-e targets are prone to misinterpretation because sometimes they only include greenhouse gases, and sometimes they deduct aerosols negative forcings. Also, they entail large uncertainty ranges because of their non-CO2 components s0ome of which eg aerosols have large uncertainty ranges.