[Platform] [Fossil Fuels] Geophysical Research Letters: stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions

[Gracegrnrnbw at aol.com]

Nat - I went to the link and it does not let you read this article - but the 
conclusions are much mor grave than anything I have seen - are you signed into 
this group to be able to read their paper?   Do you agree with it?   Is this 
a pier-reviewed article?   And/or do you have a way to tell if it is somehting 
you trust from what you know about the authors evenif you cannot access the 
whole article?

I am asking because I wonder if we should be publicizing this (was it broadly 
pulicized and I just missed it?) And because zero-emissions I cannot figure 
out what that means....

As animals I think being alive means we put out CO2?   And the food we each 
emits CO2 in growing it, right?

Thanks, Grace
In a message dated 3/2/08 8:18:51 PM, nat.fortune at comcast.net writes:


> 
> LIMITING EMISSIONS MAY NOT BE ENOUGH
> 
> CLIMATE PROGRESS - Avoiding climate catastrophe will probably require
> going to near-zero net emissions of greenhouse gases this century. That
> is the conclusion of a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters. . .
> Here is the abstract:
> 
> "Current international climate mitigation efforts aim to stabilize
> levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, human-induced
> climate warming will continue for many centuries, even after atmospheric
> CO2 levels are stabilized. In this paper, we assess the CO2 emissions
> requirements for global temperature stabilization within the next
> several centuries, using an Earth system model of intermediate
> complexity. We show first that a single pulse of carbon released into
> the atmosphere increases globally averaged surface temperature by an
> amount that remains approximately constant for several centuries, even
> in the absence of additional emissions. We then show that to hold
> climate constant at a given global temperature requires near-zero future
> carbon emissions. Our results suggest that future anthropogenic
> emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize global-mean
> temperatures. As a consequence, any future anthropogenic emissions will
> commit the climate system to warming that is essentially irreversible on
> centennial timescales."
> 
> [Among the findings]
> 
> - "Our results suggest that if emissions were eliminated entirely,
> radiative forcing from atmospheric CO2 would decrease at a rate closely
> matched by declining ocean heat uptake, with the result that while
> future warming commitment may be negligible, atmospheric temperatures
> may not decrease appreciably for at least 500 years.
> 
> - "We have shown here that stable global temperatures within the next
> several centuries can be achieved if CO2 emissions are reduced to nearly
> zero. This means that avoiding future human-induced climate warming may
> require policies that seek not only to decrease CO2 emissions, but to
> eliminate them entirely.
> 
> http://climateprogress.org/2008/02/28/stabilizing-climate-requires-
> near-zero-emissions/
> 
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> 




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