Princeton Carbon Mitigation Initiative

Sup interweb im back with some more goodness.  On this beatuiful HOT California afternoon I was thinking how perfect a day it was and how the temperature is only going to continue to rise during the rest of my life.  The Bay Area is great and if it someday had LA weather that would be a shame!  So the name of the post today is Carbon Management.  I know there are plenty of skeptics out there so I'll just throw down some straight FACTS foo!

This is a graph derived from the Vostok Ice Cores.  They are drilled in Antarctica, and the gases and chemicals trapped inside the ice gives a definitive view into the past four interglacial periods, going back about 420,000 years.  This graph show atmospheric CO2 levels compared to the temperature.  As you can see there is a correlation; higher CO2 levels are linked to higher temperatures and lower temps lower CO2 levels.  That data point far to the right is where we are today, at around 380 ppm CO2, which is about 100 ppm higher than any point in the Vostok history.

Also I'd like to adress the argument that I hear regularly from people in Carbon denial.  

Whatever Apillies, even if we are producing so much CO2, volcanoes and cows farting produces much more than we ever will!

LOL!  Everytime I hear this it gets me.  Cuz its such bullshit.  

"A lot of climate skeptics claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans do," Gerlach said. "They never give any numbers, but the fact is you will never be able to find the volcanic gas scientist that will agree to that,"

-Terrence Gerlach, retired Volcanologist

Volcanoes on average produce about .15-.26 Billion tons of CO2 yearly.  Humans emit more than 35 billion tons yearly.  More than 120 times than volcano emissions.  So please next time anyone tries to make this argument take em to the cleaners and at least google a couple of legitimate sources to prove it!  Just take a look at the Vostok Cores.  All of the last 400,000 years of data show includes all of the volcano eruptions that happened during that period.  It would seem that Mount Helena has erupted every three hours for the past 30 years if that outlier point on the graph is to be explained without human interaction.

Apillies you are getting heated over nothing!  I mean all of those scientists out there taking air sample have flawed data, and they  are LYING to us!  They have a political agenda to push!  I mean COWS FARTING is a bigger cause of global warming than we could ever be....

This global warming rejection is also false, but it actually has a grain of truth in it.  Cows produce 80 million metric tons of methane a year, which is about 30% of human methane emissions.  So yes.  Cow farts are causing global warming.  But NO they are not producing near as much methane as humans nor are they the problem.

Secondly scientists rarely have any political power whatsoever, nor would they want to put their reputations on the line by producing any false data.  In competition to have the most accurate in depth data in their fields.  

What scares me more than how high the CO2 levels today is the Carbon debt that we are in.  When you release 35 Billion Metric tons of Carbon into the atmosphere every year (on top of the Earth's natural processes that is) it takes awhile for the Carbon to really affect the temperature.  Thats because the oceans are the temperature regulator of the Earth, and it takes a long time for the heat trapped in the atmosphere to permeate the surface and reach the depths.  Specifically it takes about 50 years for the Ocean to experience 2/3s of the heat gain.  This fact makes the race to reduce Carbon emissions even more critical, because its almost to the point of no return (which most climate scientists point out to be about 450 ppm).  When 450 ppm cue the extreme weather systems rising ocean levels and general catastrophe.  But Im not even trippin cuz my pops is a TV Repairman and has the ultimate set of tools, so I can fix this thang.  JK here are the tools though.

Princeton Carbon Initiative.  http://cmi.princeton.edu/

 These are the findings of the Princeton Carbon Initiative, a must see for anyone interested in the Carbon crisis.  If we continue at current emissions levels we will be at critical Carbon levels by 2050.  If we can flatten our emissions rate and maintain a constant level then we should be alright!  Keeping emissions flat for 50 years will require trimming projected Carbon output by roughly 8 billion tons per year by 2060, keeping a total of 200 Billion tons from entering the atmosphere.  This is referred to as the Carbon Stableization Triangle.  Each of the eight wedges in the graph has the power to remove about 1 Billion tons of Carbon per year.


Here are the eight wedges from the websitem
1. Energy Efficiency
2. Fuel Switching
3. Carbon Capture and Storing
4.Nuclear
5.Wind
6. Solar
7.Biomass Fuels
8. Natural Sinks


Ill add some more about my favorite parts of the CMI later on.

Ive got some other work to do now but I'll add a bit on a couple of my favorite strategies from the CMI.  They are all important but not exactly equal in my eyes.  And as usual some G-Shit to end the post.