A new measure of global warming from carbon emissions
June 10, 2009Damon Matthews, a professor in Concordia University's Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment has found a direct relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. Matthews, together with colleagues from Victoria and the U.K., used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to show that there is a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.
Until now, it has been difficult to estimate how much climate will warm in response to a given carbon dioxide emissions scenario because of the complex interactions between human emissions, carbon sinks, atmospheric concentrations and temperature change. Matthews and colleagues show that despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.
These findings mean that we can now say: if you emit that tonne of carbon dioxide, it will lead to 0.0000000000015 degrees of global temperature change. If we want to restrict global warming to no more than 2 degrees, we must restrict total carbon emissions - from now until forever - to little more than half a trillion tonnes of carbon, or about as much again as we have emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
"Most people understand that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming," says Matthews, "but it is much harder to grasp the complexities of what goes on in between these two end points. Our findings allow people to make a robust estimate of their contribution to global warming based simply on total carbon dioxide emissions."
In light of this study and other recent research, Matthews and a group of international climate scientists have written an open letter calling on participants of December's Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide so as to avoid dangerous climate change.
Source: Concordia University
Feb 15, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
I suspect this is just a way to enable any sort of carbon tax to be constitutionally legal in the US as it adds an apportioning mechanism to an otherwise unapportioned taxation.
Unfortunately the abstract does very little to explain anything past the simple word problem posted before us.
Someone who flunked 9th grade Intro to Science knows more about science than this idiot. CO2 levels will eventually level off and the global climate will eventually stabilize. The CO2 emitted back in the Roman Empire isn't around any more, nor is the bulk of the CO2 from World War II and even a good amount from 1980. 100 years from now, the bulk of the CO2 from my tailpipe today will be a distant memory. Saying that the CO2 produced today will affect the climate FOR ALL TIME is absurd in the extreme!
Is research grant money really worth burning what little credibility you have left? After writing this heap of filth, Damon Matthews's degree should be worth less than toilet paper and he should be laughed out of any scientific conference.
Sadly, politics seems to matter more in science these days than does... science!
Yeah, global climate change is real. Yeah, there is a man-made component of it. But don't prostitute yourself for political dollars and still call it science. For once, I'd like to see a study on actual climate change that incorporates the decadal climate cycles, the current data that clearly shows a cooling trend since the start of the decade and lets us make our own mind about what it says!
After all, any trend (even a modest one) extrapolated out 100 years will show naught but UTTER CATASTROPHE! Why should global climate change be any different?
Phrases like "we must restrict total carbon emissions - from now until forever " should snap even the most ardent eco-revolutionary out of their media-induced hyponosis long enough to realize the framework behind the statement.
This ideology presents a more dangerous incursion into Western civilization than communism, fascism, or religious fundamentalism. It has spent 10 years on the blitz to shock the public into fear, while carefully positioning solutions that provide an entirely novel, incredibly clever path to a scientific, yet totalitarian system of human control.
This ideology has nothing to do with climate, ecology, or even conservation. None of its claims or promises even try to represent reality, instead they have everything to do with infiltrating governments, economies, and populations with the single-minded goal of creating a world where human life subsists in perpetual bondage to a supranational oligarchy, whose iron rule is established by an emergency that can never end.
In a world ruled by these viciously intelligent plutocrats only their cronies would have the means of production and wealth, while all others would be subject to oppressive regulations, smothering all free economic activity and concentrating the people into managed systems of artificial scarcity. Rights and constitutions would be canceled by false "emergencies" presented by ecological propaganda, and those few nations that resisted and asserted liberty and reason would be isolated and sanctioned, perhaps even to the point of war and invasion.
It will pose as a democracy, but a vote in such a system would be a meaningless placebo as power would be concentrated and brokered far away from the people. Tear out this invader by the roots and throw it into the fire.
global warming is proved false and ALL these researchers careers are over just as if they put: 20 years at the lysenko institute of genetics...
Therefore his model should be able to predict the weather too... WOW!!
But wait, as far as I know, no-one can predict the weather more than a few days in advance using any kind of model, and that is for a very small potion of the Earth.
This guy is either a genius extraordinaire, or, like most of his kind before him, another so-called scientist with an ego far bigger that his propensity for common sense.
A bit of humility would go a long way in promoting REAL science...
A lab does not the planet make. :)
Conclusion: this is an idiotic article about good research or a good article on idiotic research, I'm not sure which. I'll leave that up to the reader.