Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, took place in Exeter in the United Kingdom February 1st-3rd 2005. The aim of the meeting was to examine the climate treaty's goal of avoiding "dangerous interference" with the climate system. The meeting did not define a precise threshold beyond which dangerous interference was likely to occur. The contributed papers, though, did build up a series of assessments of the potential impact of different levels and rates of climate change. British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett observed that: "Science on its own cannot give us the answer to the question of how much climate change is too much. What it can do, however, is set out the consequences of allowing different degrees of climate change to continue in order to guide the choices that we must take."

The final communiqué from the conference notes that "a number of new impacts were identified that are potentially disturbing." On the basis of the latest evidence, Bill Hare, visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany warned that the European Union target of restricting global warming to two degrees Celsius "may even be too high in the long-term." "I think we have to keep temperatures below that level," he said, "otherwise we risk really major changes."

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From the conference

• BBC
• New Scientist

• Conference programme and presentations
• Conference report

In the run-up to the conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, the Scientific Alliance and the George C. Marshall Institute sponsored a meeting for greenhouse sceptics at the Royal Institution in London, United Kingdom, on January 27th. It was "a valuable opportunity for debate on a topic frequently obscured by angst and alarmism," according to the organizers. Speakers included David Bellamy, Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer and Benny Peiser.

Commenting on the meeting, John Maddox, a former Nature editor, said that, while he did not dispute the link between carbon dioxide and global warming, "the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change."

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• Guardian Unlimited

The report "Meeting the Climate Challenge" from the International Climate Change Task Force calls on governments to take immediate action to avoid breaching the threshold of a two degree Celsius warming. According to the authors, the change in atmospheric composition over the next ten years could commit the world to a two-degree warming if action is not taken to limit emissions. The report was sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Center for American Progress and The Australia Institute.

The two-degree threshold has been adopted by the European Union as a limit beyond which "dangerous interference" with the climate system is inevitable. The release of the report coincided with the news that the world's "largest" climate model experiment, climateprediction.net, was predicting even higher temperature rises than previously thought likely.

More information

• Terra Daily
• Science Daily

• Download "Meeting the Climate Challenge", Center for American Progress