IPCC Chairman Personally Backs 350ppm CO2 Targets, Holding Temperature Rise to 1.5°C:

The IPCC as an organization is prohibited from making specific policy prescriptions — confining itself to the science of climate change — but the most recent IPCC report did say that 450ppm should be the absolute limit for atmospheric CO2 concentrations to prevent catastrophic climate change. However, IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri has just told AFP that personally he supports the more stringent benchmark of 350ppm:

AFP asked Dr Pachauri about the ongoing calls from poor nations of the world for stronger mid-term emissions cuts from rich nations, and whether 350ppm was a more appropriate target for governments to set. He responded:

As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations, but as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.

The current global atmospheric CO2 level is about 387 parts per million, so getting it down to 350 would be extremely difficult, to say the least.

But the difficulty of the task doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. Looking at all the news we’ve had in the last year or so about the quickly accumulating effects of climate chaos, plus the big, scary unknowns of the permafrost bomb (huge releases of CO2 and methane from defrosting Arctic permafrost) and the methane hydrates/clathrates deposits, which are already bubbling away, then 350 sounds like a very defensible answer to the “what do we really need” question.

World’s Largest Companies Need to Double Pace of CO2 Reductions to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change:

Calling it a Carbon Chasm, the Carbon Disclosure Project reports that the world’s largest companies need to double the pace of their carbon emissions reduction efforts if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided:

Their new study shows that the Global 100 firms are on track for annual emission reductions of 1.9%, versus the 3.9% needed to reduce emissions 80% by 2050:

Click through to TreeHugger for more detail.

See also the press release [PDF] and the report [PDF].

Everyone who is surprised by the findings of this study will now sprout wings and fly to the moon.

Water experts pour on pressure for Copenhagen deal (emphasis added):

At the World Water Week conference, held last week (16-22 August) in Sweden, political leaders and experts called for water to be a key part of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December.

In a statement addressed to global representatives negotiating a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, conference participants agreed that “water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt and it is therefore central to planning and adaptation surrounding climate change”.

The interconnected nature of water in economic, social and environmental issues is highlighted in the document, which insists that a firm and fair agreement is “crucial in order to secure future water resource availability”. This opinion reinforces an earlier message sent to world leaders at the World Water Forum meeting in March (EurActiv 20/03/09).

Even those who have read this site for a while and heard me yammer endlessly about the energy/water nexus can barely imagine my sense of relief that this issue is finally getting more attention. The critical point is the part I bolded above: Water will be be not just “a key medium” for climate chaos impacts, it will be the vector for delivering those changes to humanity. Even if you (for whatever reason) choose to ignore sea level rise and floods, just the droughts and loss of an incredible amount of ice from glaciers worldwide has the potential to trigger nightmare scenarios. How peaceful do you think the world will be when over a billion people are forced to adjust to having little or no access to fresh water for personal use, agriculture, and hydroelectric generation?


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