At Newsweek: Why the Lima Agreement Is a Failure
With the Lima agreement, “we are on track to [be] between 3 to 3.5 degrees [by 2100] so far,” says Massimo Tavoni, deputy director of the climate change unit at Italian research body Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, one of the institutions involved in the report. Three degrees warming, he says, is achievable in the “most optimistic case” assessed by the report, in which the researchers assume that the Lima agreements are augmented by a more ambitious agreement in the near future.
That would require other major emitters, like Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia, to adopt emission-cutting plans comparable to the ones adopted by the U.S., the European Union and China. In a more pessimistic scenario, where future agreements are less ambitious, we could see 3.5 to 4 degrees of warming. And if we do nothing beyond implementing the agreements in the Lima talks, Tavoni says, we’re looking at warming of between 4 and 5 degrees.
“Four or 5 degrees would be a disaster,” Tavoni says. “We need to get on the right track to get at least to 3 degrees. I’m not very optimistic that what we see now will do that. I’m not sure. [But] I’m hopeful that if we step forward, we can.”
Why does EVERYONE keep lying about what we are "on track" for? Everyone keeps quoting invalidated starting and ending points. Once that stops, we'll all realize that we're facing 4C no matter what. And likely, since nothing can ever seem to get done, 6C - 8C. Pretending that numerous uncounted feedbacks don't "count" somehow is insanely stupid. Or that even 2C is "ok" when we already know that is absolutely not okay.
The ridiculous divisions within the so-called climate community are driving mediocre public policy and pressure. When we cannot even agree on what the temperature projections REALLY ARE (taking into account all known feedbacks and current measurements), then how can we EVER expect there to be meaningful climate action when we keep spouting nonsense about how hot it's going to get?
You know what is really sad and tragic? By the time the climate community obtains consensus within itself, leaving nothing out as they are prone to do, it will already be far too hot.
And we think the problem is the denialsphere...