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The first in a series of shows looking forward to the UN climate change discussions in Montreal takes a look at the need to set internationally agreed thresholds which will give us the targets we need to avoid dangerous climate change. We speak to Simon Retallack of the International Climate Change Task Force who tells us that we need to keep warming within 2 degrees centigrade if we are to avoid:
- irreversible loss of the Amazon rainforest and 95% of coral reefs
- global food insecurity
- a third of the world’s population facing the threat of water scarcity
- and ‘positive’ feedbacks that would result in much greater levels of warming
Will the talks in Montreal result in an agreement on such limits and thereby set the framework for binding targets that might help us avoid disaster? What are we to make of Tony Blair’s recent pronouncements against binding targets? What will the EU be taking to the negotiating table?
For more information, see Setting a Long-Term Climate Objective by Simon Retallack for the International Climate Change Taskforce
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90 minutes
- What are the latest scientific developments?
- Is there a level of climate change that we should aim not to exceed in order to avoid the worst impacts?
- What should the government be doing at the national and international level during this critical year to help achieve this?
We ask:
- David Griggs – Director, Hadley Centre, The Meteorological Office’s Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
- Peter Ainsworth MP – Chair, Environmental Audit Committee
- Tony Grayling – Associate Director, Institute of Public Policy Research
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We ask three experts about the science of climate change:
- David Griggs, director of the Hadley Centre for climate change research at the Meteorological Office; David plays an ongoing role in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world’s leading authority on the science of climate change
- Mark Lynas has travelled the world to see some of the effects of global warming first hand and whose book “High Tide: News from a Warming World” is published by Flamingo in March 2004
- Peter Cox, a carbon cycle modeller at the Hadley Centre, who will look at the dangers of “positive feedback” scenarios