[SustainableTompkins] [tcrp] Avoiding the GHG tipping point

[marlo capoccia]

isn't this interesting?  have you heard numbers like this thrown around in 
the past?

-marlo

At 05:49 PM 10/5/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>In a conversation with a guy at NRDC last year, I was told that if we all
>stopped driving tomorrow, it would take 100 years to start to feel a
>reversal. They would be a good source for stats.
>
>Jen
>
>
>On 10/5/06, bosak at ibiblio.org <bosak at ibiblio.org> wrote:
> >
> > A scientific opinion widely quoted recently is that we will reach
> > a "tipping point" where climate change becomes irreversible when
> > the atmospheric concentration of CO2 reaches 440 ppm.  (We're
> > currently at about 382 ppm and at present rates of increase will
> > hit the 440 mark in about twenty years.)
> >
> > It should be obvious that there are a lot of problems with setting
> > a specific figure like this, but it's useful in trying to
> > understand the situation.
> >
> > What I want to know is, by what percentage would current world
> > consumption of fossil fuels have to decrease in order to avoid
> > hitting the tipping point?  There would appear to be a lot of
> > hysteresis (i.e., time lag) involved, so the amount of reduction
> > would have to be more than the amount needed to maintain a steady
> > state once we got there, but how much is that?  Fifty percent?
> > Sixty?  Eighty?
> >
> > Has anyone crunched the numbers on this?  For purposes of
> > discussion, I need just one credible, conservative estimate of the
> > amount we'd have to reduce global fossil fuel consumption,
> > starting today, in order to avoid hitting 440 ppm.  (It would be
> > best to have several estimates, since they're bound to differ
> > depending on methodology used, but I'd be happy to have just one.)
> >
> > Jon
> >
> >
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> >
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