Analysts from IEA says the extreme rise in greenhouse gas emissions will make it impossible to reach the 2 degrees target that politicians have claimed is the threshold we should aim for to prevent dangerous runaway climate change. Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, says that if the current rise in carbon emissions continues the 2 degrees target will just become "a nice Utopia".

"I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions," Birol told the Guardian. "It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say."

The British top climate economist Nicholas Stern, who recently endorsed the 350 ppm target, said in a response to the new shocking figures that we could see "widespread mass migration and conflict" as a result:

"These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a ‘business as usual’ path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path … would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100.

Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce."

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, warned that time is now seriously running out for us:

"This news should shock the world. Yet even now politicians in each of the great powers are eyeing up extraordinary and risky ways to extract the world’s last remaining reserves of fossil fuels – even from under the melting ice of the Arctic. You don’t put out a fire with gasoline. It will now be up to us to stop them."

And just two days ago preliminary data from the US government’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory was released showing that carbon dioxide levels peaked at the highest levels on record last week. The data show that "2011 CO2 levels peaked last week at 394.97ppm. This is an increase of nearly 1.6ppm on last year and the highest ever recorded".

350 ppm, as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. We are currently at 390 ppm and, according to the science, we need to get back to 350 ppm as soon as possible to be able avoid runaway climate change.

In an interview with a German newspaper Stern endorsed the 350 ppm target saying he “think it’s a very sensible long-term target.” Bill McKibben, environmental writer and founder of 350.org, writes:

“I think it’s a very sensible long-term target.” He went on to explain: “People have to be aware that is a truly long-term target. We have already passed 350ppm, we are at 390 ppm of Co2 and at 435 ppm of Co2-equivalents right now. It is most important to stop the increase of flows of emissions short term and then start the decline of flows of annual emissions and get them down to levels which will move concentrations of CO2 back down towards 350ppm.

McKibben says “Stern is right” and that his endorsement will “help stiffen the push for real measures” at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

Stern is right, of course–even if we do everything right at Copenhagen, we won’t be back at 350 soon. But unless we do everything right we’ll be back at 350 never ever. His call will help stiffen the push for real measures at the conference.

Also read:
- Nicholas Stern: Climate change will create billions of refugees, extended world war
- Nicholas Stern: “I underestimated the threat”
- Green Quote of the Week: Nicholas Stern

“Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than 2C of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with 4C. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.”

Read this important piece on the Guardian!

Lord Nicholas Stern, British economist and academic who is most known for the Stern Review said, during an improvised speech at a Cape Town hotel in South Africa, that if we don’t act quickly and determinedly to address climate change the world will face billions of climate refugees and extended world wars in a near future:

“If the world’s nations act responsibly, Stern said, they will achieve “zero-carbon” electricity production and zero-carbon road transport by 2050 _ by replacing coal power plants with wind, solar or other energy sources that emit no carbon dioxide, and fossil fuel-burning vehicles with cars running on electric or other “clean” energy.

Then warming could be contained to a 2-degree-Celsius (3.4-degree-Fahrenheit) rise this century, he said.

But if negotiators falter, if emissions reductions are not made soon and deep, the severe climate shifts and sea-level rises projected by scientists would be “disastrous.”

It would “transform where people can live,” Stern said. “People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move if you talk about 4-, 5-, 6-degree increases” _ 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And that would mean extended global conflict, “because there’s no way the world can handle that kind of population move in the time period in which it would take place.”"

More quotes from Lord Nicholas Stern:
- “I underestimated the threat”
- Green Quote of the Week: Nicholas Stern

Also read:
- More than 6 billion people will perish by the end of the century

“Emissions are growing much faster than we’d thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we’d thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates and the speed of climate change seems to be faster.”

“People who said I was scaremongering were profoundly wrong.”

Lord Stern of Brentford have realised, just like many other scientists are beginning to do, that the predictions in the IPCC reports have been too soft and that climate change will be “stronger than expected and sooner than expected.”

Stern is known for the Stern Review that showed it would be much cheaper to act on climate change than doing nothing.