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The 300-350 Show - An Emissions Budget for Climate Safety

Climate Radio | 16.05.2009 17:20 | COP15 Climate Summit 2009 | Climate Chaos | Energy Crisis | World

Two papers published in a recent issue of Nautre tell us how much CO2 we can afford to pump into the atmosphere to make it likely for us to stay within 2C average global warming. The findings have dramatic implications for national and international climate policy. We speak to one of the paper’s lead authors, Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics team, University of Oxford.

- mp3 24M


References for this programme:

Press release for the Malte Meinshausen paper
 http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/on-the-way-to-phasing-out-emissions-more-than-50-reductions-needed-by-2050-to-respect-2b0c-climate-target
Q&A relating to the Meinshausen paper
 http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/qanda_meinshausen_etal_2009_ghgtargets-2c_pik-press.pdf
A Burden Beyond Bearing (overview of targets, Nature, 30 April 2009)
 http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090429/pdf/4581091a.pdf
Contents for Nature, 30 April 2009 with links to the papers
 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/
World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree (The Guardian)
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/global-warming-target-2c
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (George Monbiot)
 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/17/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy
UK government targets ‘too weak’ to prevent dangerous climate change (Tyndall Centre)
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/17/uk-climate-budget-advice-weak
The Exit Strategy: Emissions targets must be placed in the context of a cumulative carbon budget if we are to avoid dangerous climate change (Myles Allen et al, commentary in Nature Reports Climate Change)
 http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0905/pdf/climate.2009.38.pdf
Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emissions trends (Anderson & Bows, PTRS, 2008)
 http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/journal_papers/fulltext.pdf

Climate Radio
- e-mail: phil@switch-off.co.uk
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