Thread by @SteB777

1) I want to illustrate the problem here with this article from @RHarrabin who is supposedly the BBC "environment analyst". See the thread below.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1413033528422436864

2) In an otherwise good article, @RHarrabin bizarrely concludes.

"What do we imagine things will be like with a rise of 2C, which was until recently considered to be a relatively "safe" level of change? "
bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-…

3) If you understand the history of the 2C figure as regards to climate change, and how it was defined and explained, it is impossible to understand how any informed person thought it was a safe figure.
carbonbrief.org/two-degrees-th…

4) Here's a screen grab from the relevant bit in the excellent @CarbonBrief article above.

5) Here's where you can download the 1990 SEI report in full if you want to read the whole report.
sei.org/publications/c…

6) It is crystal clear if you understand the 1990 SEI report from which the 2C figure was derived, that 2C was never considered a safe level of warming. It says so. In fact, there was increasing danger from any global average temperature rise above 1C.

7) This was in 1990 i.e. 31 years ago. So how come long standing media, journalists, not just the BBC, have been repeatedly telling us that 2C of warming was safe. How did they ever get this impression?

8) The public has been seriously misled that we had plenty of time to act, because 2C of warming was safe, and we had some time before we reached that level. Whereas the safe level was 1C of warming and we have already exceeded that.

9) I had a long running spat with the @guardianeco , who kept repeating in it's otherwise good coverage of climate change, that 2C of warming was an internationally agreed, scientifically determined safe level of warming. It never was.

10) 2C was an absolute red line we must never exceed in any circumstance. It never was a safe figure we could work up to. The idea was we were supposed to never get anywhere near 2C of warming.

11) The myth, or rather blatant propaganda and disinformation, was that the Paris Climate Agreement figure of 1.5C of warming, was setting the safe figure to a lower level, as if the goal posts have been shifted.
unfccc.int/process-and-me…

12) However, if you actually understand how the 2C was derived and stated in 1990, in the SEI report, it was never seen as a safe figure we could work up to. It was a red line we must never get near. Therefore the Paris 1.5C level was consistent with that.

13) The narrative that the Paris Agreement set a lower level of 1.5C is entirely false. Once again, it is entirely consistent with the way the 2C figure was defined and explained. They are not different figures.

14) The 1990 SEI Report clearly explained that 1C should have been the "safe level", but that they couldn't outline this as a target, because we were already on target for more than 1C of warming, on the basis of already emitted anthropogenic emissions.

15) Therefore I have no idea how seasoned environmental analysts like @RHarrabin and @guardianeco got the false impression that 2C was a safe level of warming, when the 31 year old report that defined it, said it wasn't.

16) At the very least we are looking at some very serious "groupthink" type phenomenon, where the people who were supposed to be keeping the public informed, actively misled the public as to the situation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

17) What seems to have happened is that the media and journalists who were supposed to be informing the public, thought that maintaining business as usual, the current economic status quo, the current economic model, was more important than anything else.

18) That they didn't want the public demanding immediate action 30 years ago, because this would entirely change business as usual and the current economic model. So they misled the public as to what was necessary to head off the call for immediate action.

19) For the last 30 years the public has been entirely misled that we had plenty of time to address the climate emergency, and there was no need to do anything immediately, because 2C of warming was safe and we were a long way off it.

20) However, 2C of warming was never safe, and the objective always was to keep warming well below that, to as near to 1C of warming as possible. Which meant acting immediately, and with urgency.

21) This "groupthink" and the failure to tell the public the truth has resulted in this dangerous complacency, where governments are promising Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.

22) Yet the Net Zero 2050 that politicians speak about isn't real Net Zero, it is an imaginary Net Zero, in which with false accounting they cook the books by simply leaving out lots of emissions, not counting them, and relying on imaginary technology that doesn't yet exist.

23) It's scarcely possible to believe this has happened, given how clear the facts are. That we have ended up with this massive reality gap, between what we are doing and what we need to actually do. #MindTheGap

@GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @KevinClimate @ClimateHuman @JKSteinberger @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen