Word: co2
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...question the accuracy of today's climate models, and by extension, whether we should really be concerned about potentially catastrophic temperature increases over the coming century. They further point out that plants may indeed thrive in a future with higher carbon dioxide levels - after all, greenhouses pump in extra CO2 to encourage growth - but they fail to note that hotter summers and increasing droughts could threaten agriculture. They assert that sea levels can rise only 1.5 ft. over the coming century, ignoring the very real risk of accelerated melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which would multiply that...
...could be a pitfall. Say we try to use Myhrvold's giant-garden-hose scheme (after hopefully giving it a better name) without reducing carbon emissions. We could end up in a situation in which we can't abandon geoengineering without risking sudden, disastrous warming due to unchecked CO2 emissions. Then, what was meant to be a quick, cheap fix would turn out to be a trap. And while Levitt and Dubner say the fix is appealing at least in part because it's politically impossible to imagine the world agreeing on a common carbon cap - pointing to the problems...
...recently converted to burning sawmill wastes, allowing its heating-gas bill to immediately drop from $6,600 a month to $1,100. Townsend, Mont., schools converted their boilers from propane and oil to wood pellets. The new system is expected to pay for itself in fuel savings, plus selling CO2 emission offsets through the Climate Trust. Meanwhile, Vermont's Middlebury College is completing a central thermal biomass system that will provide heating and cooling, saving $2 million a year on fuel-oil bills, plus generating one-fifth of campus electrical-power needs. Middlebury is planting fast-growing willow shrubs...
...Indonesia and replaced with a plantation of palms to make biodiesel. That's where the accounting error crops up: we should assess the carbon lost in deforestation when we measure the greenness of biofuels, but that's not how it works under Kyoto, which simply exempts all CO2 emissions that come from using biofuels. CO2 emissions resulting from deforestation or other changes in the way we use land are not evaluated at all. The result is a huge, if accidental error in the existing global carbon accounting system - and one that now stands to be repeated...
...estimates that if the world were to meet a 50% "cut" in global greenhouse gases by 2050 under the current calculations, the necessary biofuel-crops expansion would be large enough to displace 59% of the world's natural forest cover - which would release an additional 9 billion tons of CO2 a year. "Carbon capture and storage, solar power, electric batteries - all of these alternatives have serious costs," says Searchinger. "But if you can just use up the world's carbon in forests to meet your cap, that turns out to be pretty cheap...