Avoiding dangerous climate change

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See also: Climate change mitigation

Avoiding dangerous climate change (also expressed with equivalent terms such as preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system) is a major objective of both scientific research and in international governmental development of climate policy.

The concept expressed by these phrases was central to the "IPCC Second Assessment: Climate Change 1995" published by the International Panel on Climate Change.^[1] In 2002, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),^[2] an international organization established by treaty in 1992, incorporated the concept as the focus of its formal Framework Convention policy:

"ARTICLE 2. OBJECTIVE. The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner." (Emph. added)^[3]

Avoiding dangerous climate change and its equivalent terms have continued in common usage in the policy community,^[4][5] scientific literature^[6][7] and news media,^[8][9][10] and in 2005 a scientific conference (see below) focused on the concept and used the phrase in its title. The problem that arises is to decide what level of interference would lead to "dangerous" change.^[11] The relevance of the issue is increasing as existing Earth System Models project that as early as 2020 in tropical areas, 2047 on average globally, the Earth's surface temperature could move beyond historical analogs, potentially impacting over 3 billion people and the most diverse places on Earth.^[12]