Irreversible Warming: The Next Nuclear Waste

The Next Nuclear Waste

Writing in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” a group of scientists from all over the world found that the resulting climate change from carbon dioxide emissions will be essentially irreversible for a thousand years or more, even after emissions are halted.

“We have to think about it much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain,” explains one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon is leading the research team. She adds, “What we’re doing with carbon dioxide is forever.”

Key to their findings is the already-known role oceans play both for cooling the atmosphere and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their research shows that the two processes work against each other so that the warming lasts, even after emissions stop. Says Solomon, “It’s the cancellation between those two terms that keeps the temperature constant for a thousand years in our calculations.”

“It evokes, I think, clearly what really is at stake here,” says Solomon, “Which is the future of the planet in the long, long term. Changes that this generation could make, choose to make, or not to make, which will affect the world for a thousand years or more.”

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more: http://www.sciencentral.com/video/2009/01/26/irreversible-warming/