For immediate release: Tuesday 24 February
2015
Correction: Thursday 26 February
2015
Our press release on February 24th understated the
portion of experts believing average global temperature
is a good indicator of planetary health as 41% instead
of 48%, and vice versa for the portion believing it is
not. This error has been corrected below.
Climate scientists call for global cap on carbon
emissions
San Francisco, CA. —“A global
goal for average CO2 concentrations in 2030 or
2050 must be agreed on and translated into specific
emissions and policy efforts.”
This was the conclusion of a comment article,
recently published
in Nature. The latest results from a Vision Prize
poll, released today, 24 February, have shown that a
majority (69%) of surveyed climate experts support these
claims—the respondents agree that relatively
short-term goals for average CO2 concentrations
in the atmosphere need to be agreed upon and translated into
policy.
In addition to this, a strong majority of the climate
experts (93%) agree that CO2-emitting
infrastructure will continue to expand if uninterrupted by
governmental policy. Indeed, a
paper
in Environmental Research Letters has indicated
that without a climate policy, the abundant use of natural
gas, which is a lower carbon fuel than coal, would actually
boost electricity consumption. A majority of the Vision
Prize expert participants (68%) agree that even under
favorable assumptions, abundant natural gas will have little
impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
The results come as policymakers are set to meet towards the
end of 2015 at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
in Paris to negotiate a new global agreement on climate
stabilization, and university endowment and pension funds
are under pressure to divest from the fossil fuel industry.
“Here’s the dilemma for investors and
policymakers,” says Peter Kriss, Director of Research
for the Vision Prize poll of climate scientists. “It
is known that carbon dioxide emissions cause the Earth to
warm. If the strong consensus of our scientific experts is
correct, then most of the coal, oil and gas reserves of
publicly-listed companies are ‘unburnable’.
(See, for example,
CarbonTracker.) The existential questions for investors and policymakers
become: ‘Which countries and companies, if any, will
give up burning fossil fuels, and when?’”
The results from the poll revealed that there was some
disagreement as to whether average global temperature is a
good indicator of planetary health (48% believe it is while
41% believe it is not), whilst there was little consensus
over alternative measures — approximately half (56%)
believe that greenhouse gas concentrations are a better
measure, and approximately half (53%) believe that ocean
heat content is a better measure.
“This round of results suggests that while there is
debate as to which indicators of planetary health are best,
there is much more agreement on the necessary actions and
the implications of inaction,” says Kriss.
Vision Prize asks expert panelists for their answer to each
question, as well as how they believe their peers will
respond. Poll participants are pre-screened to ensure they
have relevant expertise. As with previous Vision Prize
polls, the experts surveyed agreed with each other more than
they thought they would, with the most common views tending
to be even more common than expected. 97 of 340 registered
expert participants responded to this poll.
The complete findings from the latest Vision Prize poll,
including confidence intervals, can be viewed here —
http://poll.visionprize.com/
ENDS
Notes to editors
Contact:
For more information, please contact Peter Kriss, Director
of Research for Vision Prize, email:
pkriss@visionprize.com
Vision Prize®
Vision Prize® is a polling platform for capturing
meta-knowledge — knowledge about what people know. In
addition to assessing the views of scientists, Vision Prize
asks its expert participants to predict the views of their
scientific colleagues. This approach gives new insight into
the level of scientific consensus on various issues, which
in some cases may be just as important as knowing the
majority view. Charity gift cards — our way of
thanking panelists for their participation — are
awarded as prizes for
exceptional meta-knowledge.
Vision Prize is a nonprofit research partnership. It
operates
in collaboration
with IOP Publishing’s scientific community website,
environmentalresearchweb, and is affiliated with researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University. The research program is strictly nonpartisan
— we are not an advocacy organization. For more
information, go to
http://www.visionprize.com/.
environmentalresearchweb environmentalresearchweb is a unique site
for the entire environmental science community. It provides
analysis and commentary on all areas of environmental
research, including policy and sustainable technology. News
and talking point articles are integrated with research
articles from our sister journal
Environmental Research Letters.