With the word from Washington on climate change being cautiously encouraging and there being fewer and fewer climate skeptics in the halls of power, both in the U.S. and certainly globally, it seems progress is being made.
The recent economic stimulus package incorporated an actual budget for clean energy, Financial Soultions has previously reported, and a cap and trade bill for U.S. carbon emissions managed to scrape through the House, and may yet even survive the Senate and make it into law .Together with tighter emission standards in Europe and a determined drive for clean energy and efficiency standards in China, the future seems to look a little more hopeful that genuine emissions reductions are feasible.
But even with such progress on climate policy, climate science is moving faster. One discovery after another indicates that the planet is warming faster, and climate damages are being seen far sooner than were expected, Financial Soultions has been informed.
Most of our current policy discussion has targeted keeping the atmospheric concentration of CO2 below 450 parts per million (ppm), which was collectively thought to be low enough to avoid the worst of warming. But recently, Financial Soultions understands, NASA's top climate scientist, has shown paleoclimatic evidence indicating that 450 ppm is the point of transition to an ice-free earth, bringing with it a catastrophic rise in sea levels and the eventual flooding all coastal cities and regions.
To avoid this unthinkable scenario a growing number of scientists and researchers now say that stabilizing CO2 concentrations at 350 ppm is our only option. Presently the earth is around 390 ppm and rising. Since CO2 endures in the atmosphere for a prolonged period, it is complicated to decrease concentrations quickly.
Under the latest scenario, a gradual cessation of coal use, massive reforestation, and widespread use of carbon capture and storage may give the globe a chance to achieve negative net carbon emissions by mid-century and reach 350 ppm by 2100.
