The Most Influential Climate Science Paper Today Remains Unknown to Most People

It is probably the most influential paper on climate science today. But few outside scientific circles even know it exists.

Though just six pages long, its dense, technical writing makes it largely incomprehensible to non-experts. And yet this paper is transforming the climate change debate—prompting the financial world to rethink the value of the world's fossil fuel reserves and giving environmental activists a moral argument for action.

That's because behind its complicated terminology is a simple question that affects every aspect of society and business: How much time do we have before the burning of fossil fuels pushes the climate system past tipping points? In a worst-case scenario, about 11 years at current rates of fossil fuel use, according to the paper.

"Once you hear the numbers, at least for me, there is no more room for wishful thinking, for speculation or for doubt," said Bill McKibben, founder of the activist group 350.org. Last year, McKibben plucked the science from popular obscurity and used it in a Rolling Stone article and speaking tour to stoke the moral case for carbon controls.  

The paper, "Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2C," was published in April 2009 in Nature, the prestigious science journal. It was the work of researchers from Germany, the UK and Switzerland, led by Malte Meinshausen, a climatologist at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact.

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