Reuters reports (here today) that Two research papers, supposedly published in the journal Nature, have warned that the global temperature rise could exceed “safe” levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.
It sounds credible, it sounds believable, it also sounds alarming … and yet …
- No individual is quoted in the Reuters press release, its just “the study says…”, nor is any actual source referenced, just a vague “journal Nature”, but we are not told what issue.
- Not only is there no link to the actual papers supposedly quoted, but the titles for these papers are not mentioned either.
Looking further, the current issue of the journal Nature (14-20 Oct) does not contain any such research papers (perhaps this is to be in the next issue 21-27 Oct).
Also the Met Office Hadley center press release page makes no mention of any of this.
Search Google and everybody is echoing the press release … yet nobody cites any sources, so I can only wonder if any of these echoes bothered to fact check?
So until somebody can come up with a credible source for any of this, then I remain skeptical about this claim. I suspect it just might be credible and that the correspondent has picked up some press release at a climate change venue regarding papers that have not yet been published.
Anybody out there got any sources or further insights on all this?
What does “within our lifetimes” mean? All but the B1 scenario from the IPCC 4th assessment report (summary) predict an increase of nearly 2°C by the end of my lifetime.