This is why we do what we do!

So what would be safe? The answer is that “limiting the period and magnitude of temperature excursion above the Holocene range is crucial to avoid strong stimulation of slow feedbacks”.
In other words, aim to get temperatures back under the Holocene maximum of 0.5ºC, which implies a level of greenhouse gases below 320 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), compared to the current level of 405 ppm.

Read the full article by David Spratt, published at Climate Code Red on 27/7/17, at http://www.climatecodered.org/2017/07/paris-15-2c-target-far-from-safe-say.html

Another article in response to David Wallace-Wells’ recent controversial article in the New York Magazine.

Last Week, David Wallace-Wells wrote a cover story for of New York Magazine, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” on some of the worst-case scenarios that the climate crisis could cause by the end of this century. It describes killer heat waves, crippling agricultural failures, devastated economies, plagues, resource wars, and more. It has been read more than two million times.

The article has caused a major controversy in the climate community, in part because of some factual errors in the piece—though by and large the piece is an accurate portrayal of worst-case climate catastrophe scenarios. But by far the most significant criticism the piece received was that it was too frightening.

Read the full article by Margaret Klein Salamon, published by Common Dreams on 17/7/17, at https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/07/17/planet-warming-and-its-okay-be-afraid

Also read her excellent analysis of the benefits of ’emergency mode’ at Leading the Public into Emergency Mode

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.

Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

Read the full article by David Wallace-Wells, published by New York Magazine on 09/7/17, at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=tw

This article sparked a huge response, with numerous articles appearing over the next week either condemning or supporting him for saying it like it is (more or less). For example:

by David Roberts: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/11/15950966/climate-change-doom-journalism?mc_cid=0f0999589c&mc_eid=0b9f078224

by Victoria Herrmann: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/12/doomsday-narratives-climate-change-dangerous-wrong

by Margaret Klein Salamon: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/07/17/planet-warming-and-its-okay-be-afraid