How Much Is Too Much?: Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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- Mike_Johnston
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more from News:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=limits-on-greenhouse-gas-emission...
It has been obvious to me for some time that the first step to combating or reversing climate change due to CO2 is to firmly establish how much CO2 can be released into the atmosphere to first, stop the CO2 level from increasing and second, to then devise ways to either maintain that "safe" level or to decrease emissions until that level is reached. I know numbers have been floated repeatedly as to those levels but it hasn't really been addressed in the United States from a global perspective.Two papers were published by the journal Nature today which attempt to establish those numbers. The conclusion of those papers is that; "To avoid catastrophic climate change, the world will need to emit less than one trillion metric tons of carbon between now and 2050. In other words, there is only room in the atmosphere to burn or vent less than one quarter of known oil, natural gas and coal reserves."
So there we have it. The bar is established and all that remains is to decide how (or if) we are going to meet it. The effort to establish a green economy is already underway and the players in that economy are going to be those who can work within the limits imposed by the carbon level bar. This does not necessarily exclude any particular form of energy it just establishes a common playing field for all types of energy and those who can't bring it can't play.
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Mike_Johnston
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Another factor which could entirely skew the results is the release of methane hydrate from thawing permafrost. That is such a new event that no one seems to be counting it in even though it may prove to have a greater effect in a shorter time than all of the CO2 we have produced so far...
- 9 months ago
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Mike_Johnston
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JanforGore
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But would it or could it be reduced in time before the effects became irreversible? The CO2 of the last hundred plus years that is already in the atmosphere has already put this into motion. Yet, congress is still talking about an 80% reduction by 2050. According to this chart, that definitely isn't good enough considering what we would be adding to what is already there. It must be drastically reduced in a short period of time to reduce the catastrophic effects of what is already there. Even cap and trade won't accomplish that at this point I fear. So it comes down once again to moral courage.... do we have that on the whole as a species yet? Are we even close?
- 9 months ago
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JanforGore
