The UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs has released online a new book (here in PDF, 16 MB) titled, “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,” which is a collection a papers presented at a meeting of the same title early last year. We commented on the meeting last year here and here.

I have just read Rajendra Pachauri’s (head of the IPCC) introductory chapter which was based on remarks that he gave at the conference. Not much new in it, but I thought that the following passage from Dr. Pachauri’s chapter provides a telling indication of how a narrow focus on human-GHG-caused climate change tends to warp the thinking of otherwise smart people about issues that involve much more than just human caused climate change:

In Mauritius, a couple of weeks ago, there was the major UN conference involving the small island developing states. In discussions with several people there, I heard an expression of fear based on the question: suppose a tsunami such as that of December 26 were to take place in 2080 and suppose the sea level was a foot higher, can you estimate what the extent of damage would be under those circumstances? Hence, I think when we talk about dangerous it is not merely dangers that are posed by climate change per se, but the overlay of climate change impacts on the possibility of natural disasters that could take place in any event.

So by 2080 society is going to experience changes probably far greater than from 1930 to 2005 and he is talking about the difference in impacts between a 25 foot and 26 foot wall of water? In this case, he probably would have been on solid ground by saying that patterns of coastal development over the next 75 years are far, far more important than an extra 12 inches of sea level rise, rather than trying to link climate change to tsunami impacts. But as we’ve argued ad repeatium here, this is the kind of thinking that necessarily results from Article 2 of the FCCC.

I’d welcome comments from anyone who has read parts of the book. I am sure that it is a pretty accurate preview of what we should expectin IPCC AR4 next year.