[Vision2020] Warning From Copenhagen: 2500 Participants: 1400 Scientific Presentations: Warming Irreversible For a Thousand Years

[Ted Moffett]

It would be wonderful progress if all those in public political
positions, who have no specialized expertise in climate science (or those
few, if any, who might), would publicly address the anthropogenic climate
crisis, conceding that the consensus among currently publishing climate
scientists (in credible peer reviewed journals) is overwhelming that humans
are altering climate in a potentially catastrophic manner.  Everyone in
public political life who publicly minimizes this danger, offering support
to the claim that there is substantial scientific evidence that
the consensus position among climate scientists is seriously doubtful, is
part of the problem, rather than the solution.  The more citizens who demand
action to address anthropogenic climate change, the easier it will be for
the private and public sectors to address the problem:

Article "A Warning From Copenhagen" below from climate scientist Stefan
Rahmstorf.  Rahmstorf's bio:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=53

A physicist and oceanographer by training, Stefan Rahmstorf has moved from
early work in general relativity theory to working on climate issues.

He has done research at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, at the
Institute of Marine Science in Kiel and since 1996 at the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research in Germany (in Potsdam near Berlin).

His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change, past and
present.

In 1999 Rahmstorf was awarded the $ 1 million Centennial Fellowship Award of
the US-based James S. McDonnell foundation.

Since 2000 he teaches physics of the oceans as a professor at Potsdam
University.
-----------
 A warning from Copenhagen Filed under:

   - Reporting on
climate<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/reporting-on-climate/>
   - Climate Science<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/>

-- stefan

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/a-warning-from-copenhagen/#more-690

In March the biggest climate conference <http://climatecongress.ku.dk/> of
the year took place in Copenhagen: 2500 participants from 80 countries, 1400
scientific presentations. Last week, the Synthesis Report
<http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf>of
the Copenhagen Congress was handed over to the Danish Prime Minister
Rasmussen in Brussels. Denmark will host the decisive round of negotiations
on the new climate protection agreement this coming December.

The climate congress was organised by a "star alliance" of research
universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing
- to name a few. The Synthesis Report is the most important update of
climate science since the 2007 IPCC report <http://www.ipcc.ch/>.

So what does it say? Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key
findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already
discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than
was expected a few years ago - such as rising sea levels, the increase of
heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice. "The updated
estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC
projections from 2007″, says the new report. And it points out that any
warming caused will be virtually irreversible for at least a thousand years
- because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Perhaps more interestingly, the congress also brought together economists
and social scientists researching the consequences of climate change and
analysing possible solutions. Here, the report emphasizes once again that a
warming beyond 2ºC is a dangerous thing:

Temperature rises above 2ºC will be difficult for contemporary societies to
cope with, and are likely to cause major societal and environmental
disruptions through the rest of the century and beyond.

(Incidentally, by now 124 nations have officially declared their support for
the goal of limiting warming to 2ºC or less, including the EU - but
unfortunately not yet the US.)

------------------------------------------

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20090628/57106baf/attachment.html