Shock Horror - BBC Reports On Lowered CO2 Sensitivity

Is this a sign of things to come as the latest UN climate fest Durban looks set to be a wash-out? There's a report on the BBC web site about a new paper in Science that looks again at climate sensitivity. And, as the BBC reports, it finds a much lower range of sensitivity than the current IPCC estimates. To quote the report:

The new models predict that given a doubling in CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels, the Earth's surface temperatures will rise by 1.7 to 2.6 degrees C.

Now what is interesting here, over and above the results themselves, is that the report doesn't come from Richard Black or Roger Harrabin, who are arch climate alarmists and who normally cover these stories. Furthermore, there are no quotes from any of the Hockey team, none from Bob Ward or indeed any of the other usual suspects.

Of course, there are the obligatory boiler-plate warnings about CO2, but even this is relatively circumspect:

The authors stress the results do not mean threat from human-induced climate change should be treated any less seriously, explained palaeoclimatologist Antoni Rosell-Mele from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who is a member of the team that came up with the new estimates. 

But it does mean that to induce large-scale warming of the planet, leading to widespread catastrophic consequences, we would have to increase CO2 more than we are going to do in the near future, he said.

Could this new cautious tone from the BBC be the shape of things to come. Perhaps the recent spate of reports that show just how compromised the BBC is when it comes to climate change is starting to have an effect. The Climategate 2.0 emails can only help. Hopefully...