• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
‘LET’S SUE BIG OIL’: Legal Team Launches Class Action Campaign for B.C. Municipalities June 17, 2022
‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’, Colleague Says, After Brazil Confirms Murders of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips June 17, 2022
Infrastructure Gap a ‘Life and Death’ Matter as Northern Canada Warms June 17, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate & Society Carbon Levels & Measurement

Full Accounting of Industrial Age Emissions Makes Global Carbon Budget 40% Smaller

July 31, 2017
Reading time: 2 minutes

byrev / Pixabay

byrev / Pixabay

 

The already limited carbon budget available if countries intend to get climate change under control is even narrower than previously thought, according to a new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change that factors in greenhouse gas emissions in the first century of the Industrial Age.

Most climate calculations make the tacit assumption that significant greenhouse gas emissions began sometime after 1860. By then, though, the Industrial Age had actually been hard at work for more than a century. The study by British and American scientists, including Pennsylvania State University’s Michael Mann, analyzed fossil fuel emissions from the time the Industrial Revolution actually got under way around 1750, and 1860, when most emissions inventories begin.

That calculation leads a global carbon budget—the additional volume of emissions that can still be released to the atmosphere without triggering catastrophic climate change—as much as 40% smaller than previously believed.

That budget was thought to be roughly 1,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide or equivalent as of 2011. With earlier industrial emissions factored in, however, that number falls to about 600 billion tons—roughly 15 years’ worth at current emission rates.

One implication is that the human economy will hit its “safe” limit for carbon emissions 15 years sooner than previously anticipated. The prognosis is also grim for the Paris climate agreement’s long-term target of containing warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial averages. The new calculation, said Mann, “sort of takes 1.5ºC off the table in the absence of active carbon removal.”

For that matter, Mann added, “this study does indicate that it may be more of an uphill battle than we previously thought in order to stabilize warming below the commonly-defined dangerous limit of 2ºC.”

That limit is open to question, too, noted Reto Knutti, a climate expert with Swiss technical university ETH Zurich. “There is no magic, hard threshold that separates ‘safe’ from ‘dangerous,’” he told the Post, noting that that degree of warming might be tolerable for some countries but catastrophic for others.

Adjusting the start date of emission inventories, Knutti points out, “is just as much a political problem: If countries at some point are made responsible not just for their current but also for their past emissions, then it matters when we start the historical blame game.”

Mann, often a lightning rod for climate deniers, published other research earlier this year supporting findings that climate change is altering the northern hemispheric jet stream, allowing weather patterns like droughts, heat waves, and heavy rain to stall in place for longer.



in Carbon Levels & Measurement, COP Conferences, International, Oil & Gas

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

David/flickr
United States

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1
Graco/Facebook
Food Security

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 26, 2022
2
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr
Forests & Deforestation

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
1

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

The federal government's Cliff Street Power Plant is at the centre of Ottawa's plans to reduce natural gas demand. Photo: PWGSC

EXCLUSIVE: Ontario Regulator Refuses New Pipeline, Tells Enbridge to Plan for Lower Gas Demand

May 30, 2022
5.2k
Jason Woodhead/Flickr

Trans Mountain Pipeline On Track to Lose $600 Million, Parliamentary Budget Officer Finds

June 24, 2022
341
Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay

Plastics Cited as ‘Fossil Industry’s Plan B’ as Guilbeault Announces Partial Ban

June 24, 2022
219
Bruce Reeve/Flickr

Opinion: Ontario’s New ‘Carbon Tax’ Looks Like the One Doug Ford Fought

June 7, 2022
1.6k
eloialferez66/pixnio

Toronto’s New Backyard Homes Will Help Fight Sprawl

June 24, 2022
70
Greg Goebel/Wikimedia Commons

Canadian Pension Board Invests $141M in Chinese Coal Projects, Undercutting Federal Phaseout Policy

July 29, 2020
2.3k

Recent Posts

David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1
pxhere

Environmental Racism Bill Passes Second Reading in House of Commons

June 26, 2022
1
Graco/Facebook

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 26, 2022
2
stockvault

Animal Agriculture Could Reduce Future Pandemic Risk, UK Researchers Say

June 26, 2022
1
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
1
Adam E. Moreira/wikimedia commons

Suspend Transit Fares, Not Gas Tax, Climate Advocates Urge Biden

June 26, 2022
1
Next Post
Pembina Institute

Ontario Environment Minister Murray Quits Politics, Joins Pembina as Executive Director

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}