Word: carbone
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...report on climate change, I come across a lot of scary facts, like the possibility that thawing permafrost in Siberia could release gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or the risk that Greenland could pass a tipping point and begin to melt rapidly. But one of the most frightening studies I've read recently had nothing to do with icebergs or mega-droughts. In a paper that came out Oct. 23 in Science, John Sterman - a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Sloan School of Management - wrote about asking 212 MIT grad students to give a rough...
...That's where Sterman's research comes in. "There is a profound and fundamental misconception about climate," he says. The problem is that most of us don't really understand how carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Increasing global temperatures are driven by the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. Before the industrial age, the concentration was about 280 parts per million (p.p.m.) of carbon in the atmosphere. After a few centuries of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, we've raised that concentration to 387 p.p.m., and it continues to rise by about 2 p.p.m. every...
...That means that carbon emissions would need to be cut drastically from current levels. Yet almost all of the subjects in Sterman's study failed to realize that, assuming instead that you could stabilize carbon concentration simply by capping carbon emissions at their current level. That's not the case - and in fact, pursuing such a plan for the future would virtually guarantee that global warming could spin out of control. It may seem to many like good common sense to wait until we see proof of the serious damage global warming is doing before we take action...
...lite scientists could simply solve climate change on their own, public misunderstanding wouldn't be such a problem. But they can't. Reducing carbon emissions sharply will require all 6.5 billion (and growing) of us on the planet to hugely change the way we use energy and travel. We'll also need to change the way we vote, rewarding politicians willing to make the tough choices on climate. Instead of a new Manhattan Project - the metaphor often used for global warming - Sterman believes that what is needed is closer to a new civil rights movement, a large-scale campaign that...
...There is a similarly clear imperative for steamrolling the opponents to comprehensive environmentalism. What’s more, the promises and improvements of a post-carbon society will vastly outshine the archaic values which will have to be cancelled. But the environmental revolution requires at least something of a revolutionary rhetoric—not because it is appealing but because it is true. Some will be hurt by environmentalism. Many more, lucikly, will accrue its benefits...