{"id":217,"date":"2010-12-17T00:33:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T04:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber\/?p=217"},"modified":"2010-12-17T00:33:57","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T04:33:57","slug":"the-missing-gigaton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/2010\/12\/17\/the-missing-gigaton\/","title":{"rendered":"The missing gigatons . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, I heard a new and depressing phrase today &#8211; &#8220;the gigaton gap&#8221;. \u00a0UNEP published a <a href=\"https:\/\/motherjones.com\/files\/unepreport.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">technical report<\/a>, just before the Cancun COP, on the gap between likely emissions under any global agreement, and our best scientific understanding of what our emissions levels need to be to prevent warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius over the next 90 years. \u00a0The findings were stunning (but sadly not all that surprising)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To get on a path likely to keep us at or below 2\u00b0 C of warming, we would need to hold ourselves to emissions levels of\u00a0\u00a044 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide\u00a0equivalent (this includes all CO2 emissions, as well as emissions of other greenhouse gases normalized to CO2 by converting their impact to the amount of CO2 required to create that same impact).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yeah, it is a huge number, so big as to be meaningless &#8211; but don&#8217;t worry about the huge number &#8211; worry about how this number stacks up the next set of numbers<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If we just keep doing what we are doing, projections have us at 56 GtCO2e in 2020, leaving a gap of 12 GtCO2e. \u00a0That is a big, big gap. \u00a0Horrifically huge. \u00a0Hell, we have a gap equal to 21% total emissions!<\/li>\n<li>Low ambition pledges are not that much better. \u00a0Lenient implementation of such pledges would lower emissions to around\u00a053 GtCO2e, leaving a gap of 9 GtCO2e.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But this really gets depressing when we look at the &#8220;good&#8221; scenario:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Even under a best case scenario for the agreement, emissions would only drop to about 49\u00a0GtCO2e, STILL LEAVING A GAP of 5 GtCO2e.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;But 5 is much better than 12 or 9, right?&#8221; you say. \u00a0Well, it is better. \u00a0But 5 GtCO2e\u00a0is approximately\u00a0equal to the annual global emissions from all the world\u2019s cars, buses and transport in 2005. \u00a0ALL OF THEM. \u00a0So 5 GtCO2e is not good news.<br \/>\nSummary: In Cancun, we kicked any real action down the road a year, making things harder to achieve under any circumstances. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber\/?p=206\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">We already knew this<\/a>. \u00a0But, even under the good scenarios, we were going to come up short of what was needed &#8211; something many have long suspected, but after Copenhagen and Cancun, we now have numbers people are likely to commit to, so the analysis becomes a lot more read. \u00a0Ladies and gentlemen, ditch the global agreement &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber\/?p=181\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">we can do this other ways<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, I heard a new and depressing phrase today &#8211; &#8220;the gigaton gap&#8221;. \u00a0UNEP published a technical report, just before the Cancun COP, on the gap between likely emissions under any global agreement, and our best scientific understanding of what our emissions levels need to be to prevent warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,24,4,1],"tags":[191,96,338,339,340],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-environment","category-mitigation","category-policy","category-uncategorized","tag-cancun","tag-cop","tag-emissions-gap","tag-gigaton","tag-unep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}