[Grad-postdoc-assn] ASP seminar: Pieter Tans, Wed, 9 Nov, 11am

[mclong at ucar.edu]

ASP Seminar

Pieter Tans (NOAA/CIRES)
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - 11:00am; Mesa Lab, Main Seminar Room

Climate Change and the End of Exponential Growth

In the public non-scientific debate that is ongoing in the United States
about climate change a few important and well established facts are often
forgotten. They are: 1. The observed increases of long-lived greenhouse
gases are entirely due to human activities. 2. The partial absorption of
Earth’s radiation to space, cooling the Earth, by greenhouse gases is
known. 3. Many of the greenhouse gases will remain in the atmosphere for
hundreds to thousands of years.  4. Physics and chemistry tell us that we
should expect to see warming, and we have. 5. There are important feedback
mechanisms in the climate system, from well known to poorly known, that
could amplify the climate effect of human emissions.  Therefore, man-made
global climate change is a clear manifestation that we have reached limits
of resource consumption by our species, and that continuing
business-as-usual has a substantial chance of destroying our civilization.
 It is likely that fossil fuel resources will not remain cheap for much
longer, with high energy prices becoming an impediment to development.
Vigorous policies to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels are necessary
to continue enabling development and to safeguard it by reducing the risk
of catastrophic climate change.

http://www.asp.ucar.edu/seminars.php