"How credible is the Copenhagen COP 15 as the framework process to prevent climate catastrophe?" questions Dr. Peter Carter (GreenHeart Education)

Peter Carter is a retired doctor and a founding director of CAPE (Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment – in Canada). He challenges that the Bali-Copenhagen negotiations are not credible so long as they not based on the science of the full extent of the risks to huge regional populations of the most climate change vulnerable and to all future generations of all species. So long as the process restricts the science base to the 2007 IPCC assessment (AR4) it cannot be based on these risks and is not credible. The IPCC AR4 is based on artificial scenarios and the real world is beyond the worst case IPCC scenario. The IPCC temperature projections omit the greatest of all dangers- the additional warming of carbon feed backs. In today's real world the very worst carbon feedbacks are happening- in the Arctic. Join the dialogue at http://climatesustainabilityplatform.ning.com/

This is an excellent project! Humanity must have a reliable climate sustainability framework, and incredible though it is the world is not working on any credible climate framework. The fine intent and principles of the 1992 Framework Climate Change Convention continue to be ignored and the Convention weakened by negotiations supposedly on how to strengthen and implement it.

For developing a real and reliable framework there is a first question to be addressed before all others. How credible is the Copenhagen COP 15 as the framework process to prevent climate catastrophe? The evidence shows, I am sad to say, that the process is set up to formalize global climate catastrophe - rather than to prevent it. It is hard to see how the world wide political will can be raised to the extent of rebuilding the world to run on renewable energy when the UN negotiations give the world the message that we are not even past dangerous climate interference.

First and foremost for a climate sustainability platform we must insist that the painful but clear fact we are past dangerous climate interference, facing catastrophe and in a state of planetary emergency be formally acknowledged. This is the position, after all, of Ban Ki moon James Hansen and John Holdren.

The negotiating process itself is highly dangerous because of the false 'no danger no emergency' message given the world, because it reinforces a number of fatally (really) false politically determined assumptions, is based on publshed science up to January 2006 (IPCC AR4) and because it restricts policy options to a choice of a few paths all leading to catastrophe.
If the process can't work right for preventing climate catastrophe the process must be put right.

Related to the planetary emergency the top irregularity in the current process to address,for a climate sustainability platform, is what constitutes dangerous climate interference.The Bali-Copenhagen negotiations are based on the incredibly ridiculous and clearly fatal assumption, by the IPCC and endorsed by the FCCC Secretariat, that there can be no scientific definition of dangerous climate interference. The IPCC scientists are not allowed by IPCC rules to say the D word because that would be 'policy prescriptive'. It is unbelievable, as the IPCC is effectively in charge of the future of the planet - but in all the IPCCs 2007 reports the D(angerous) word cannot be found once. Imagine flying in a plane if the engineers had said they couldn't define what would be dangerous in its construction design plans. This dangerous assumption about not defining dangerous climate interference makes the negotiations fail on credibility from the start. They are after all supposed to be making policy for preventing dangerous interference- aren't they ?

The evidence from the Arctic is screaming at us what dangerous is. It's there and it's now. The Arctic stage is now set for runaway global warming due to all the changes to that region- at a warming of 0.78oC. That is the direst of planetary emergencies. "The potential for runaway greenhouse warming is real and has never been more clear. With possibilities of collapsing ice sheets, methane bubbling out of permafrost, desiccated rainforest ecosystems, and sporadic ocean circulation patterns, concern is growing that Earth's life-support systems are approaching thresholds that contain tipping points." (UNEP Year Book 2009). The accelerated melt down of the summer Arctic Ocean (now projected for 2015-2030) will make the northern hemisphere agriculture vulnerable and let loose much more methane from the Arctic feedbacks. Planet Earth has been made a dangerous place for all of us and we are all in a dire state of emergency.

Just stay at 0.78oC and runaway has to happen - just a question of time. Yes, it's terrifying but it is true and has to be faced. It does lend even more credibility to the suggestion of Professor Hans Schellenhuber to the Guardian (September 2008) that none of the proposed greenhouse gas reduction targets are sufficient and that it may be only a reduction of C02 levels to the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million can ensure a stable climate. It has to be under 320 ppm judging by the Arctic today. 'Insufficient' means, in Ban Ki moon's apt word - oblivion for humanity but the current UN process denies any possibility of such catastrophe. So we must give the future a good guard rail and that surely puts safety below 300ppm.

The Bali-Copenhagen negotiations are not credible so long as they not based on the science of the full extent of the risks to huge regional populations of the most climate change vulnerable and to all future generations of all species. So long as the process restricts the science base to the 2007 IPCC assessment (AR4) it cannot be based on these risks and is not credible. The IPCC AR4 is based on artificial scenarios and the real world is beyond the worst case IPCC scenario. The IPCC temperature projections omit the greatest of all dangers- the additional warming of carbon feed backs. In today's real world the very worst carbon feedbacks are happening- in the Arctic.

2 degrees to extinction
Next on the list of these fatal false assumptions (there are several) is the assumption of the politically determined 2oC danger limit which is now in fact regarded as the global warming target to aim for.The negotiations are offering the world a choice between 2oC and 1.5oC. This is really no choice at all. Even the 2oC policy source, the EU says 2oC is not safe. The original EU policy was 1 to 3oC. As James Hansen has said 2oC is 'disastrous'. The published science is consistent over the past 15 years as showing that anything above 1oC cannot be considered safe. Bill Hare in World Watch's State of the Planet 2009 is a recent expert opinion on this issue. As we will go over 2oC, Hare advises a plan for mitigation to peak (past 2oC) for as short as possible and get back down to 1oC as quick as possible.

A small fact of the science when considering a dangerous level of global warming, that the Copenhagen process ignores, is the total additive cumulative effects of global warming climate disruption and sea level rise lasting for over one thousand years.The science is definite on global warming lasting 1000 years. Though the earliest and greatest danger for human survival is the multiple climate change damages to agriculture- food and water security do not rate high in the science base for the negotations. If the world allows the Copenhagen negotiations to stick humanity to a 1.5 or 2oC target plan runaway global warming and global catastrophe will be our legacy. The computer models have proved extremely inaccurate and unreliable, with their projections proving to be out by many decades. Even so the negotiating process is relying on the modeling results of the IPCC 2007 assessment. We need no more delays so from now more modeling. We had best take our cue from the best model there is- the real planet Earth model. This model says 2oC or 1.5oC is planning on catastrophe. So long as the negotiations are based on a the choice of a 1.5oC or 2oC global warming target they are criminally negligent (at best!) The world has to (at the very least) ensure that future generations are not being condemned to any risk of global climate catastrophe. There is no way we do that by a 1.5 to 2oC policy restriction (lasting for 1000 years), and we had best assume the safe target for the future of humanity and life on Earth can be no higher than a global warming of 0.5oC. The ice core record indicates that because we can't be certain about agriculture above 0.5oC - and 100% certain on climate sustainability for agriculture we have to be.