New Findings to be published in Nature find that each carbon dioxide emission “results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs,” according to an article on Science Daily’s website. That means we can now predict that X amount of CO2 will result in Y amount of global temperature increase.
The article stated: “Professor Damon Matthews of Concordia University together with colleagues from Victoria and the U.K., used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data” for their new findings. The conclusion is that if we want to restrict global warming to 2 degrees, we must restrict total carbon emissions—”from now until forever.”
The validity of climate models has been an argument of skeptics but an article from Science Daily’s website late last year announced “findings published in the online edition of the journal Science shed further light on the fluctuations in greenhouse gases and climate in Earth’s past, and appear to confirm the validity of the types of computer models that are used to project a warmer climate in the future.” Ice core samples were used for the completed analysis of the global carbon cycle and climate for a 70,000-year period in the most recent Ice Age. The analysis showed a “remarkable correlation between carbon dioxide levels and surprisingly abrupt changes in climate.”
Professor Matthews said that he thinks most people understand CO2 emissions contribute to global warming but do not understand all the complexities in between. He said, “Our findings allow people to make a robust estimate of their contribution to global warming based simply on total carbon dioxide emissions.”
So man contributes directly to global warming as long as man keeps emitting carbon dioxide emissions into the air. We are indeed a closed ecosystem on earth. These findings show that even when we emit CO2 and think we’re getting away with it because there is no immediate response, at some point in time—a simple linear relationship, that carbon dioxide will come back to haunt us in the form of warmer global temperatures.
Read: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080911150048.htm.