During this week we’ll be putting the Copenhagen discussions into a bit of a context by covering each day what an extra degree of warming might mean for the planet. We start today – and we’re already nearly at 1 degree.

ONE DEGREE

Since the 1850s the industrial developments we have brought about have provided Stretton people with an unprecedented level of health, wealth and comfort; and have warmed the planet by about 0.7 degrees Celsius. Today we are 0.7 degrees higher than the world would be if just the normal things like sunspot activity, variation in the Earth’s orbit and so on had made their usual changes in the world’s temperature;  and because the things we do now don’t take effect for about thirty years, the things we did in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and noughties have already committed us to an extra 0.7 degrees. That’s 1.4 degrees of warming we have already booked for ourselves

Richard Betts is one of the leading climate scientists in Britain, and is in Copenhagen advising the British Government delegation. Like all scientists, he doesn’t like to be tied down, and he talks in likelihoods and probabilities.  He describes climate change issues as “like walking towards a precipice in the dark – you know it’s there but you’re not sure exactly where it is.  So the sensible thing is to stop walking as soon as you can and start walking away from it.”

Mark Lynas, author of “Six Degrees” who came and spoke in Stretton last year, is in Copenhagen as part of the Maldives delegation. He says that between one and two degrees of warming “we lose the coral reefs as the seas become more acid, the polar ice caps become significantly reduced (and as a result reflect less sunlight back into space, thus accelerating the warming process), and we lose the atoll nations, those low-lying pacific islands like the Maldives.  They will simply sink beneath the waves as the sea levels rise.”

What’s the chance of this happening? Well, if we stopped increasing emissions NOW (actually the scientific consensus seemed to be that we should stop on Wednesday) (!) and started reducing them thereafter, there is a 50:50 chance that the Maldives would survive. If we stop increasing emissions in 5 years’ time, and start reducing them then, there is a 50:50 chance that we can keep the increase down to two degrees. For a 90:10 chance of keeping the increase below two degrees, we have to STOP NOW. TODAY.

More of the effect of a 2 degree rise tomorrow. But today, the Maldives’ future depends upon the flip of a coin; and that already assumes we can do the emergency stop…which is why we hope you and everyone you know have signed up to 10:10 – reducing our emissions by 10% by the end of next year.