Eighteen years ago, on this day, September 28th, 2008,
The 4 Degrees and Beyond International Climate Conference, subtitled Implications of a Global Climate Change of 4+ Degrees for People, Ecosystems and the Earth-system, was held 28–30 September 2009 at Oxford, United Kingdom.[1] The three-day conference had about 140 science, government, NGO and private sector delegates, and included 35 oral presentations and 18 poster presentations
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 386ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that scientists had been banging on the table with increased noise and frustration, fear, whatever you, desperation, whatever you want to call it, for quite a while now, and had hoped that the March 2005 Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference at Exeter University would be a turning point, but it hadn’t been, and so some were beginning to think, well, what do we do? What can we expect? Mitigate for two, adapt for four is the slogan that came out. Well, we haven’t mitigated to two, we can’t adapt for four. No one ever assumed we could. We are heading straight into the Hellmouth.
The specific context was that the UNFCCC process was on a temporary high, with the “Roadmap to Copenhagen”, but everyone knew that even a ‘successful’ negotiation would be grossly inadequate.
What I think we can learn from this is that the scientists have been frustratingly right, if somewhat naive about political power and unable to connect with the civil society, which is frankly largely incapable of connecting with anyone or anything.
What happened next There was another conference of similar ilk in 2011 in Melbourne, but nothing useful came out of that either, we’re all doomed.
Anyway, what’s interesting from this is that it gave a real fillip to CCS in the UK, it put it on the agenda as a possible solution
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
September 28, 1977 – John Mason being an idiot again.
September 28, 1992 – IIASA again
September 28, 1997 – Australian denialist spouting tosh to his US mates.
September 28, 2000 – Liberal MP goes full cooker on Kyoto as threat to sovereignty.
September 28, 2007 – Bush invokes “technology” to fix climate. Like morons everywhere.