Huge Emissions Cuts Needed To Slow Down Warming - Exeter Conference

[hatrack]

To have half a chance of curbing global warming to within safe levels, the world's greenhouse gas emissions need to fall dramatically to between 30% and 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, a new study suggests. This is needed to achieve the European Union's ambition of trying to limit global warming to below 2��C over this period - a crucial goal which now appears wildly optimistic.

Such emissions cuts would allow the world's carbon dioxide levels to be stabilised at 450 parts per million, says Malte Meinshausen from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, who presented the work at a major climate conference in Exeter, UK, on Wednesday. Carbon dioxide concentrations are currently approaching 380 ppm, having risen from pre-industrial levels of around 280 ppm. But the EU has recommended 550 ppm CO2 as a suitable goal.

"Two degrees is a hard target, but we have to start somewhere," says Frank Raes, a climate modeller at the European Commission's research centre in Ispra, Italy. "We will not get started if we say, no, we have to go to 450 ppm," he cautions.

But Meinshausen calculates that 450 ppm is the level at which there is just a 50-50 chance that the world's average temperature rise will not exceed 2��C by 2050."

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6964

[yinkaafrica]

1. How long do we have until all hell breaks loose?

A shortage of drinkable water, rising water levels,
destruction of the rain forest, super intense storm systems,
drought, flooding, mass extinction, hoards of insects invading new territory. The crazy interaction of unexpected consequences.
How will life be in ten years? Twenty tears?