the nobel prize is handed out in norway, and the people making policies live in beijing, brussels and washington - all relatively northern climates. without doing the math, or really understanding the science, it's easy enough to think that 4 degrees won't be that bad, if you live in northern europe. after all, if you take the average temperature in london and add four degrees, that's just better weather? right?

it's for this reason that it's important to avoid separating the politics from the science.

four degrees might be manageable - if you're sentencing half the world to death.