Warming reaches maximum 10 years after carbon dioxide emission

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/ci-wrm120114.php

[font face=Serif]PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
2-Dec-2014

Contact: Ken Caldeira
[e-mail]
Carnegie Institution
@carnegiescience

[font size=5]Warming reaches maximum 10 years after carbon dioxide emission[/font]

[font size=3]Washington, D.C.--The climate warming caused by a single carbon emission takes only about 10 years to reach its maximum effect. This is important because it refutes the common misconception that today's emissions won't be felt for decades and that they are a problem for future generations.

For the first time, a study conducted by Carnegie's Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira has evaluated how long it takes to feel the maximum warming effect caused by a single carbon emission. Their work is published in Environmental Research Letters.

…

Many climate model simulations focus on the amount of warming caused by emissions sustained over decades or centuries, but the timing of temperature increases caused by particular emission has been largely overlooked. Ricke and Caldeira sought to correct that by combining the results from two large modeling studies one about the way carbon emissions interact with the global carbon cycle and one about the effect of carbon on the Earth's climate used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

…

"CO2 emissions cause global temperatures to increase for about a decade, but then temperatures stay high for a long time," Caldeira said. "This means if we avoid an emission, we avoid heating that would otherwise occur this decade. This will benefit us and not just our grandchildren. This realization could help break the political logjam over policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

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[BillZBubb]

1. This is just another hoax by liberal scientists to make us believe what isn't true!

First, they want us to believe in evolution and now this! There is no global warming in the Bible except in hell.


If needed:

[Warren Stupidity]

2. We are fucked. There is no political will to do fuck all about it and it is too late to stop it.

We are in the "mitigation" phase, we've long past the end of the "prevention phase". Instead of doing anything significant to mitigate the disaster that is occurring, we are, for example, allowing the purported "free market' (of Saud Gangsters) to set fossil fuel prices, letting prices tumble with the inevitable uptick in use that will result.

We are fucked. There is no political will to do fuck all about it and it is too late to stop it.

[caraher]

3. I was wondering when they'd publish this

I'd been looking for the paper since Ken alluded to the preliminary findings last March at the Physics of Sustainable Energy workshop.

The positive side for me is that, leaving aside triggering big positive feedbacks, the results suggest it is unlikely that what we can observe by way of warming is a drastic underestimate of the long-term effect.