Kicking the climate can...

  “It’s strange,... It’s like looking through binoculars observing people on a far off beach, running around in circles, fixated on the small area of sand beneath their feet, as a tsunami races towards them."

The Archivist - Age of Stupid

My binoculars are currently trained on Doha, the capital of the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, where representatives of 190 nations are meeting at the United Nations climate conference – ostensibly, to limit global greenhouse-gas emissions to a level that scientists say will contain the global temperature rise to 2ºC (3.8ºF), and perhaps stave off global climate catastrophe.

As the 2 week conference enters the final 5 days the delegates have made no significant progress, in fact the talks risk total collapse unless developed countries formally pledge as much as $60bn in fresh funding by 2015. According to some negotiators failure to reach an agreement by end of proceedings in Doha could cause the fragile accord reached at the last minute at last year's UN talks in Durban, South Africa, to completely unravel. That would leave the nations of the world unable to agree, even in principle, to finalise a new global climate pact by 2015 that wouldn't even enter force until 2020.

So we are still just kicking that can down the road...

While those entrusted by us to protect us from ourselves jockey for position and quibble over points of national interest the dire predictions about our not too distant future are coming thick and fast - no less than 4 reports since the start of the Doha conference.

• The World Meteorological Organization says the climate is "changing before our eyes"
• "Turn Down the Heat - Why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided", a report commissioned by the World Bank warns that “we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.”
• PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) released their November 2012 Low Carbon Economy Index in which they warn that even if we doubled our current rate of decarbonisation the world would be on track for 6°C of warming by the end of the century.
• The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published a new report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost - which highlights the approaching dangerous climate tipping point from thawing Arctic permafrost releasing large quantities of methane and CO2.

And today, Monday 3rd December, The Global Carbon Project - an Australian-based international research effort that tracks greenhouse gas output - will release it's annual findings. The new data will reveal that greenhouse gas emmissions are expected to rise by 2.6% by the end of the year, on top of a 3% increase in 2011. Since 1990, the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol, emissions have increased 54 per cent.

So there we have it. 20 years of international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emmissions to prevent dangerous climate change has left us tracking slightly above the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'business as usual' scenario. Well that was time and money well spent.

Maybe I am being overly pessimistic... they do still have 5 days. Maybe they can thrash out a deal that the US, China and the others can all agree to. Maybe they can make it immediately legally binding and halt the rise in global emmissions of greenhouse gases over-night. Maybe they can start to reduce CO2 emmissions by 5% per year starting in 2015 and continuing for the next 35 years or so. Maybe the current atmospheric CO2 levels of approx. 391 parts per million (ppm) can be brought down to 350ppm by 2050.

Maybe...