With the global total of emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatonnes this year, we're already at the edge, according to new research
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Dec 17 2012 (IPS) - The most important number in history is now the annual measure of carbon emissions. That number reveals humanity's steady billion-tonne by billion-tonne march to the edge of the carbon cliff, beyond which scientists warn lies a fateful fall to catastrophic climate change.
With the global total of climate-disrupting emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) this year, we're already at the edge, according to new research.
To have a good chance of staying below two degrees C of warming, global emissions should be between 41 and 47 gigatonnes (Gt) by 2020, said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Switzerland's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.
"Only when we see the annual global emissions total decline will we know we're making the shift to climate protection," Rogelj told IPS.
Article continues below this advert:
Making the shift to a future climate with less than 2C of warming is doable and not that expensive if total emissions peak in the next few years and fall into the 41-47 Gt "sweet spot" by 2020, Rogelj and colleagues show in their detailed analysis published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study is the first to comprehensively quantify the costs and risks of emissions surpassing critical thresholds by 2020.
Click source to read FULL report from Stephen Leahy
Tweet Article
Post to Facebook
Print Article
After FDR started, and Nixon finished destroying our Gold and Silver based monetary system, we were left with only "trust" in fiat currency that the private Feds had supply and interest rate control of. Carbon commodity marketing is the shift to a claimed finite and decreasing commodity in order to FORCE inflation and destroy the Western middle class. This is naked neo-feudalism and supporters of socialism in any guise, never realize, theirs are the expendable lives.
No number of human liberated Carbon gigatons from below the Earth's surface will ever "raise" the planets temperature. This is the false science of tyrants.