How about those red skies in Sydney last Wednesday morning?

News feeds were quick to stress that they were a freak occurrence with no real link to climate change. That may be true but I don’t find it very reassuring.  Freak weather events are already on the increase because of climate change and they are set to get a whole like freakier.

In a year when world leaders are tasked with forming an effective climate change treaty and scientists are telling us that time is almost out, I tend to think a crimson sky is a potent symbolic warning we ignore at our peril.

Recently I was asked to write a story about the significance of the up-coming Copenhagen Conference (Dec 7-18) and I struggled to find the right words. Very significant feels like an understatement.  The most important meeting in human history sounds overcooked but may well prove to be correct.

I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the climate change story, but to me it feels like the deeper you get into it the more worrying it is. Some people don’t watch the news because they don’t like to deal with bad news but I don’t think that approach works with global warming. I wish it did.

For the story I interviewed Peter Cosier (Director of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists); Greg Bourne (CEO of the Australian WFF) and Tim Flannery (2007 Australian of the Year and Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council). If you’re interested, it comes out in the next issue of G magazine.

Here’s the bit that got me. Yes, there are promising signs that world leaders are taking the science very seriously and that some kind of binding agreement at Copenhagen is likely. Yes, G8 leaders have agreed to reduce 80% of carbon emissions by 2050 and have pledged to limit global-warming to just two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The problem with that ambition is that it is very ambitious.

That’s not according to me; that’s according to the same science that those G8 targets are sourced from.

Even if the world was able to meet those 2050 targets the climate models indicate that there is still a 50% likelihood that temperatures will exceed two degrees of warming and a 5% likelihood that they will exceed four degrees warming.  The synthesis report for the Copenhagen Conference describes temperature rises over two degrees as being “difficult for contemporary societies to cope with.”

The second problem is that even if we are able to limit global warming to two degrees it will still bring with it a very troubled world. Bigger and more frequent extreme weather events and changing weather patterns will particularly impact poor nations and communities, ecosystems and biodiversity.

Peter Cosier says there is a huge question mark about the security afforded by the “two degree benchmark”.  He points out that Australia hasn’t seen a temperature increase of two degrees for over ten thousand years. His assessment: “The risks and uncertainties of what we are doing with our climate system are profound.”

What’s that old saying about red skies in the morning?

– Kirk Owers

Surf shot: Thirroul Beach, NSW, 6.30am
By: malibumedia.com.au