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Ars Technica brings us another report on Climate change.
Given what we know about the sensitivity of the climate to added greenhouse gases, it's possible to calculate how much more carbon dioxide we can admit while still having a reasonable chance of staying within the two degree Celsius envelope. What's striking about these calculations is how many large changes we'll have to make in order to get there. According to Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute, the per-capita emissions would have to drop from five tons annually (where they are now) to 1.6 tons by 2050.
To accomplish this, Sachs says that all nations will have to undergo a process he calls "deep decarbonization," which is part of the title of a report he's helped organize and deliver to the UN today. Pathways to Deep Decarbonization, prepared by researchers in 15 different countries, looks into what's needed to achieve sufficient cuts in our carbon emissions. The report finds that current government pledges aren't sufficient, and the technology we need to succeed may exist, but most of it hasn't been proven to scale sufficiently.
Achieving this, the report's authors argue, will have to come with a normal pace of economic growth: "There is no prospect of winning the fight against climate change if countries fail on poverty eradication or if countries do not succeed in raising the living standards of their people." Although this may add to the challenge of lowering carbon emissions, the report concludes that "Robust economic growth and rising prosperity are consistent with the objective of deep decarbonization."
The report identifies what Sachs called "three pillars" of emissions reductions: low-carbon electricity, massive efficiency gains, and a greater electrification of transit and infrastructure. (Sachs also added that land use changes could also have a major impact.)
Ok, folks you can't just put your head in the sand and pass this off as Science fiction. Do you honestly believe that the governments around the world will actually do something about this, or shall we just hope for a nice asteroid so we don't have to deal with long term planning?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @07:04AM
So, we will have +10C warming, minimum.
+2C limit is unachievable. +5 will not happen either, because everyone needs to burn coal anyway. Just look at recent history. Year 2000 - 60,000,000 barrels of oil go up in smoke a day. Today, not even 15 years later, knowing full well that we are fucking up the climate for centuries, we are burning 95,000,000 barrels of oil a day and the rate is going up, not down.. World coal consumption doubled in this time. Gas, probably even larger increase thanks to "clean fuel" and fracking.
In the same amount of time, nuclear power is no longer looked at favorably. And solar's and wind's growth has been far surpassed by fossil fuels in every single year in absolute terms.
+10C, here we come.