Six impossible things before breakfast

Fred Pearce has argued that the proposed G8 pledge is/was scientifically illiterate. This looks more so:

As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by midcentury, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.

-- G-8 Nations Fail to Agree on Plan to Fight Climate Change