The official United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Doha have agreed that the Kyoto agreement will continue for a second commitment period, 2013-2020, and a number of countries have made carbon emission reduction commitments for this period. But not enough reductions have been agreed to limit global warming to the 2°C rise above the pre-industrial average global temperature by the end of the century, that most climate scientists believe is needed in order to avoid potentially disastrous climate impacts.
The reductions that have been agreed will not have any real impact by 2020, and Carbon Action Tracker calculates that on the basis of this scenario, by 2040 the average global temperature will have risen more than 3°C above the pre-industrial level. This is bad news.
