Carnegie Study: Climate Requires Near-zero Emissions

[environmentalist]

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have just completed a study that has concluded the only way to stabilize the climate is to reduce carbon emissions to a near-zero level:

In the study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, climate scientists Ken Caldeira and Damon Matthews used an Earth system model at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology to simulate the response of the Earth’s climate to different levels of carbon dioxide emission over the next 500 years. ~snip

The scientists investigated how much climate changes as a result of each individual emission of carbon dioxide, and found that each increment of emission leads to another increment of warming.<...> With emissions set to zero in the simulations, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere slowly fell as carbon “sinks” such as the oceans and land vegetation absorbed the gas. Surprisingly, however, the model predicted that global temperatures would remain high for at least 500 years after carbon dioxide emissions ceased.

More at THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

[laconicsax]

1. Never fear! The Dem candidates are on it!

Only by on it, I mean they've pledged to set a goal of cutting emissions to 80% below where they were in 1990. Not good enough? Well, what if I told you that they've pledged to reach that goal by 2050?

:grr:

[environmentalist]

2. I see why

there's laconic in your User ID

I think the study says we're (insert expletive deleted).

I second your :grr: and raise you a :banghead:

[diane in sf]

3. OK, let's go for it...

[environmentalist]

4. Sounds good to me (nt)

[hunter]

5. It's one of those things that should be obvious.

Why do we assume that nature will clean up after us?

[Quantess]

6. Especially when we humans have cut down so many forests.

Nature does clean up after us somewhat, but only if we allow it to. We don't have enough trees on the planet to resorb the all carbon we're emitting.

[environmentalist]

7. The Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean, the planet's largest carbon sink, is full. That's what's tipping it.

Here's info from last October:

http://climate.the-environmentalist.org/2008/03/everything-but-oceans-sinks.html