The exact size of the carbon budget – the total CO2 emissions allowed in order to stay under a given global warming level – has proved harder to pin down. Over recent years, studies have each used slightly different approaches to come up with their estimates.In a guest article this week, scientists Dr Joeri Rogelj and Prof Piers Forster – …
The remaining carbon budget
The estimate of global warming up to the present day; The assumed future warming from emissions of non-CO2 forcings such as methane and black carbon and the reduction of cooling sulphate emissions; The amount of warming still in the pipeline once emissions are brought back to zero; The ratio between cumulative CO2 emissions and global warming (also known as the …
CO2 hits over 415 ppm
The concentration of carbon dioxide, the main, long-lived greenhouse gas causing global climate change, in Earth’s atmosphere has reached new heights, according to scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Why it matters: The new reading of 415.26 parts per million (ppm) on May 11 was the first daily baseline at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory to eclipse 415 ppm. That observatory has …
Carbon Capture: Will It Save the Climate, or the Fossil Fuel Industry? CCS’s scale and energy (efficiency) problem
For the most part, carbon capture is a fig leaf funded by fossil fuel money to allow them to continue to mine fossil fuels and sell them. In some cases, it’s funded by them to provide a source of CO2 to pump into existing tapped out oil wells so that the sludge liquefies and can be pumped out and sold. …
IEA executive director Fatih Birol: “We have no room to build anything that emits CO2 emissions”
With global CO2 emissions projected to keep rising until 2040, IEA executive director Fatih Birol tells the Guardian that: “We have no room to build anything that emits CO2 emissions”. “We are eating up 95% of the [carbon] budget, even if we don’t do anything else. Which of course is impossible, not building any more trucks or power plants,” Birol …
NYC can expect a Hurricane Sandy-like flood every 5 years if we turn around fossil fuel use now (1.5 C) or three per decade if temps rise around 2 C
The study found that New York City can expect two Hurricane Sandy-like floods per decade by the year 2100 if global temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and three such events per decade if temperatures rise to 2.0 and 2.5 C. Credit: DJ Rasmussen, Princeton University The 2015 Paris climate agreement sought to stabilize global temperatures by limiting …
“Being the Change”: daily practices of a happy, good community
In his new book, NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus explores the daily practices that build healthy, happy, and resilient communities. Peter Kalmus posted Jan 09, 2018 It can be hard to find hope in climate change mitigation. But that’s exactly what NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus does in Being the Change. While he’s not your typical government scientist—he commutes by bicycle, …
Utilities Knew: Power Providers Had Info/Acknowledged Impacts of Climate Change 50 Years Ago
8/3/2017 – BY ENERGY AND POLICY INSTITUTE Scientists had begun to warn electric utilities about climate change by 1968, and by 1988 the industry’s official research and development organization had acknowledged that, “There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is real.” Despite this early knowledge about climate change, electric utilities have continued to invest heavily in …
Allowable ‘carbon budget’ most likely overestimated
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 …