Bending the curve on CO2 down.

Climate change “is going to be one of the most significant long-term challenges” the nation faces, said Mr. Obama. 

June 7, 2014
By Thomas L. Friedman

...“Science is science,” (click here) he said. “And there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that’s in the ground right now that the planet’s going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire.”

So we can’t burn it all?

“We’re not going to be able to burn it all. Over the course of the next several decades, we’re going to have to build a ramp from how we currently use energy to where we need to use energy. And we’re not going to suddenly turn off a switch and suddenly we’re no longer using fossil fuels, but we have to use this time wisely, so that you have a tapering off of fossil fuels replaced by clean energy sources that are not releasing carbon. ... But I very much believe in keeping that 2 [degree] Celsius target as a goal.”...

There have been statements from very credible scientists since 2009 when the meeting in Copenhagen set the 2 C standard, that 2C was too much.

While it is always easier to communicate about a subject, especially when it includes an international community, the commitment to 2C is somewhat irrelevant now. No one is waiting to inch nearer 2C before acting to avoid it. I think most government leaders and global authorities realize this is a planet and it's capacity far outweighs any arrogance humans have in striking a limit of 2C. It is like, okay, 2C, does that mean 1.9C or 2.0C or is it okay to be at 2.01C? 

Two degrees Celsius isn't so much a landmark as it is a talking narrative. The new regulations by the US EPA is a very serious move to stem greenhouse gas emissions. The US EPA regulations states, "Now, we are going to begin the regulation of greenhouse gases." That is what is important. There doesn't have to be a monitor somewhere within Mauna Loa Laboratories (click here) measuring 2 degrees Celsius in order to institute the new regulations. That would pure foolishness to invite disaster in order to stem it. 

In the inconic graph above regarding the increasing levels of CO2 there is no immediate change. This trend must be reversed. Considering the elevation began before 1960, it is best to get started immediately if not sooner in bending the curve down.

By Andrea Thompson, Planet Earth Editor
December 04, 2013 03:27pm ET

NEW YORK — Famed climate scientist and activist James Hansen (click here) has said it before, and he'll say it again: Two degrees of warming is too much.

International climate negotiators agreed in the Copenhagen Accord, a global agreement on climate change that took place at the 2009 United Nations' Climate Change Conference, that warming this century shouldn't increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But in a new paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Hansen and a cadre of co-authors from a wide array of disciplines argue that even 2 degrees is too much, and would "subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm," Hansen wrote in an accompanying essay distributed to reporters....