Climate change: There is still no room for complacency in matters climatic - New estimates of permissible carbon dioxide emissions notwithstanding Headline in The Economist, September 21st 2017
Right-wing media could not be more wrong about the 1.5°C carbon budget paper Headline in The Guardian, September 27 2017
Factcheck: Climate models have not ‘exaggerated’ global warming Headline in CarbonBrief, September 21 2017
A number of media reports have asserted that our recent study in Nature Geoscience indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent. Both assertions are false. Clarification on recent press coverage of our '1.5 degrees' paper in Nature Geoscience Myles Allen and Richard Millar, September 20 2017
We have been duly advised. We will not let hope get in the way of a sense of urgency.
So what did this 'carbon budget' paper actually say? That various climate models have projected slightly more warming for slightly less cumulative CO2 than what the authors have seen in the real world, so there’s a teeny bit more wiggle room for achieving the goal of no more than 1.5° C warming this century, assuming very aggressive Green House Gas (GHG) mitigation efforts. The paper's authors don't specify what those efforts might be.
Next: What might be very aggressive, yet feasible, GHG mitigation efforts?
References:
Millar, R.J. Why the 1.5C warming limit is not yet a geophysical impossibility. 19 Sep 2017 http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/opinion/view/378
Millar, R.J., Fuglestvedt, J.S., Friedlingstein, P., Rogeli, J., Grubb, M.J., Matthews, H.D., Skeie, R.B., Forster, P.M., Frame, D.J. and Allen, M.R. (2017) Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 C. Nature geoscience.