Upper Limit On Emissions Likely To Be Exceeded Within Decades

An anonymous reader writes "A panel of expert climate scientists appointed by the United Nations has come to a consensus on an upper limit for greenhouse gases. The panel says we will blow past this limit in just a few decades if emissions continue at their current pace. 'To stand the best chance of keeping the planetary warming below an internationally agreed target of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels and thus avoiding the most dangerous effects of climate change, the panel found, only about 1 trillion tons of carbon can be burned and the resulting gas spewed into the atmosphere. Just over half that amount has already been emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and at current rates of energy consumption, the trillionth ton will be released around 2040, according to calculations by Myles R. Allen, a scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors of the new report. More than 3 trillion tons of carbon are still left in the ground as fossil fuels.' You can read a summary of the report's findings online (PDF). It says plainly, 'It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming (PDF) since the mid-20th century.'"

Comments

so who is doing the polluting?

[Anonymous Coward]

last i read the western countries were mostly reigning in their emissions and its the developing nations that are polluting the most now. except for a few exceptions like canada and norway who have large fossil fuel industries

Honestly

[MBGMorden]

I'm no global warming denier, but at this point I think there's a simple harsh reality to accept: it doesn't matter how efficient we make things that run on fossil fuels, we're going to burn them all. At best with all of our "green initiatives" we might spread out burning those fuels over an extra few decades - a century at best, but over geologic timescales any delay we induce is pretty meaningless. Every bit of it is going to be burnt and released into the atmosphere.

Once they're all gone, THEN we'll be forced to adopt new more clean sources of energy. We just have to pray that by the time all the fossil fuels are burnt the planet isn't screwed up beyond any hope of recovery (ie, still habitable).

Re:Honestly

[bill_mcgonigle]

Only if you keep your current governments that are causing this (apparently on purpose to gather power).

We have guys like Branson who say, "I'm going to fund the development of a planet full of integral fast reactors that will safely clean up all of your existing nuclear waste while providing all the carbon-free power we need as a planet for the next century," and the nuclear regulatory agencies (and politicians) won't even talk to him.

And he's only picking up up the ball that Clinton/Kerry/Gore/O'Leary intentionally fumbled ... we should be well on our way out of this hole by now, not still slipping into it. Cui bono?

We have a technological fix in hand, but technology can't fix a problem while politics is stopping it. I guess it's like Vietnam - you've got to destroy the planet in order to save it. As long as the psychopaths are in charge, there's little to be hopeful about. As long as we have a psychopath's wet dream of a mechanism in place to regulate society, we have little hope of getting rid of those psychopaths.

Re:Honestly

[SJHillman]

Because there's still many situations in which fossil fuels are a much better power source than solar/wind/hydro/etc. So it may be more practical to use fossil fuels in northern and cloudy climes and run solar powered CO2 scrubbers in sunnier climes to counterbalance it.

Re:Um what TF?

[taiwanjohn]

Expect to see more and more "un-natural" sequestration soon, as knowledge of manage intensive rotational grazing spreads among the peoples who inhabit damaged range lands. Allan Savory describes the process (along with some pretty amazing before & after photos) in this TED Talk: How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change.

Definitely an "idea worth spreading."

And yet ...

[PPH]

... the wealthy countries are expected to all the work to mitigate the problem. Sorry, I don't buy it. If it was really that bad, we'd be asking China and India to do their parts to clean up as well. Its not like every country has an inalienable right to drive Buicks with tail fins as they industrialize just because we did that once.

Until it gets bad enough so everyone has to participate in the solutions, its just a poorly hidden wealth transfer scheme.

Re:Nuclear is the only viable solution

[FirstOne]

It's not ready yet. Thorium perhaps in time.

Nuclear power is a dead end, Thorium-232 is not fissile, it must be first breed into U-233 (which is fissile), that process takes an enormous flux of of free neutrons(U-235, Pu-239). It's a chicken verses the egg problem.

Note: Breeder reactors are far more dangerous and operate much closer to the edge. They incorporate fewer safety features, (metallic fuel instead of ceramic oxides, etc), in order to maximize neutron flux.

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck to the rest of you.

That's the thing: nature doesn't care about you.

There WILL be a correction and it will suck and many, many people will die as a result.

Bluefin tuna, Tigers, Rhinos and innumerable tiny-niche animals will be a distant memory. Water will be a scarce commodity wars will be waged over. America's "bread basket" will largely be an arid land, devoid of any meaningful agriculture.

Areas that can only reasonably support a hundred thousand people (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco -- even less) will become like the ancient ruins of Rome, their uninhabited high-rises and derelict streets & freeways marking testament to a failed way of life.

65 Million years ago, we had our last mass-extinction event. We are in one now. Better animals than Human Sapiens (e.g., Class Trilobita) survived worse, but we will not.

Re:Meh

[Keith Henson]

There might be a way to spend a few tens of billions and end the use of fossil fuel by making a certain kind of renewable energy less expensive than fossil fuels. We could burn several times the current consumption of oil and not create any problems if it was carbon neutral synthetic made from really inexpensive electric power.

Dollar a gallon gasoline can be made from 1-2 cent electric power. Ground solar looks like it will bottom out around 8-10 cents per kWh. Space based solar power could get down to 1/5th of that because it gets 5 times as much sunlight in GEO. That's *IF* we can get the transport cost to GEO down to $100/kg. That's about a hundred to one reduction, but looks like it could happen. Details, including some spiffy artwork, here: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/09/propulsion-lasers-for-large-scale.html