Pressure mounts on advisers as Paris draws closer

A

s global negotiations fail on emissions reductions, scientific advisers need to resist pressure to fit the facts to the failure, warns Oliver Geden.

Writing in Nature, Geden says, “Disenchantment has set in well ahead of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in December.

“Scientists, policy-makers and the public already accept that progress will not be enough to keep global average temperature rise within the 2 °C limit set at the 2010 UN climate summit.

“The negotiations' goal has become what is politically possible, not what is environmentally desirable. Gone is a focus on establishing a global, 'top down' target for stabilizing emissions or a carbon budget that is legally binding.

“The Paris meeting will focus on voluntary, 'bottom up' commitments by individual states to reduce emissions,” he writes.

Read his story - “Climate advisers must maintain integrity”.