Scientists: Climate talks aim too low for target

he cuts in greenhouse gases offered at the 192-nation climate conference are "clearly not enough" to assure the world it will head off dangerous global warming, a key UN-affiliated scientist said Saturday.

Such projections, moreover, don't even account for the "potentially hugely important" threat of methane from the Arctic's thawing permafrost, other researchers said.

Midway through the two-week UN conference, richer nations are offering firm reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases ranging from 3-4 percent for the US to 20 percent for the European Union, in terms of 2020 emission levels compared with 1990.

One authoritative independent analysis finds the aggregate cuts amount to 8-12 percent. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC), the UN-sponsored science network, recommends that reductions average in the 25-40-percent range to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels and head off the worst of global warming.

"I think it is clearly not enough," the IPCC's Thomas Stocker said of the numbers discussed here. "We are by far short of having security that the 2-degree target will be met."

Read on | Scientists: Climate talks aim too low for target - COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

Labels: Climate Change, Copenhagen

- posted by DD @ 2:03 p.m. Perma Link/Print  

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