If the global temperature goes past 2 degrees Celsius - the danger point - we might not be able to get the climate back to a more natural state (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Two new studies in the journal Nature are trying to answer: how much is too much when it comes to global warming? Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
Two new studies in the journal Nature are trying to answer: how much is too much when it comes to global warming? Rebecca Williams reports:
These studies look at what we’d have to do to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius.
That’s considered the danger point for climate change.
Past that point we might not be able to get the climate back to a more natural state.
These papers suggest that we’ve got to cut back on burning fossil fuels a lot. They say by 2050, countries like the US need to cut emissions by more than 90% below what they were in 1990.
The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress have proposed cutting emissions by less than that – 80%.
The researchers make the point… of all the coal and oil and natural gas in the ground that we know about, we can only burn one fourth of that amount by 2050.
We’re burning it at a much faster rate.
The studies say, at the current rate, we could be past that tipping point in less than 15 years.
For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.
