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Related: About this forumAllowable 'carbon budget' most likely overestimated
http://sustainability.psu.edu/spotlight/allowable-carbon-budget-most-likely-overestimatedAllowable 'carbon budget' most likely overestimated
A'ndrea Elyse Messer
July 25, 2017
While most climate scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, implicitly define "pre-industrial" to be in the late 1800's, a true non-industrially influenced baseline is probably further in the past, according to an international team of researchers who are concerned because it affects the available carbon budget for meeting the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit agreed to in the Paris Conference of 2015.
"The IPCC research community uses a definition of preindustrial that is likely underestimating the warming that has already taken place," said Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director, Earth System Science Center, Penn State. "That means we have less carbon to burn than we previously thought, if we are to avert the most dangerous changes in climate."
The researchers explored a variety of date ranges for defining a "pre-industrial" baseline and the likelihood that, compared to those baselines, the global temperature averages could be held to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) or to the preferred 1.5 degrees C (1.7 degrees F). They report their results today (July 24) in Nature Climate Change.
"When the IPCC says that we've warmed 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) relative to pre-industrial, that's probably incorrect," said Mann. "It's likely as much as 1.2 degrees C (2.16 degrees F)."
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Allowable 'carbon budget' most likely overestimated (Original Post)
OKIsItJustMe
Jul 2017
OP
I think we are already beyond the point of limiting fossil fuel being the answer
lapfog_1
Jul 2017
#1
lapfog_1
(29,205 posts)1. I think we are already beyond the point of limiting fossil fuel being the answer
I think that if we quit burning all oil and gas right now... we still face enormous difficulty ahead (maybe 100 or 200 years ahead instead of 30 to 50). Positive feedback loops to increase global temperatures have already passed tipping points.
What we must concentrate on now are active measures to either remove CO2 and other global warming gasses or actively reduce the amount of sunlight landing on the earth (or other such giga-engineering projects to cool the planet).
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)2. See also...