Climate target is not radical enough - study (Hansen: 550 ppm "disaster", 2m sea rise this century)

[gulfcoastliberal]

One of the world's leading climate scientists warns today that the EU and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.

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Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed". A final version of the paper Hansen co-authored with eight other climate scientists, is posted today on the Archive website. Instead of using theoretical models to estimate the sensitivity of the climate, his team turned to evidence from the Earth's history, which they say gives a much more accurate picture.

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As ice sheets recede, the warming effect is compounded. Satellite technology available over the past three years has shown that the ice sheets are melting much faster than expected, with Greenland and west Antarctica both losing mass.

Hansen said that he now regards as "implausible" the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets would take thousands of years. "If we follow business as usual I can't see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century."

link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/07/climatechange.carbonemissions

[gateley]

1. I totally agree!

I hear about these caps or goals "by the year 2020" or something and I'm thinking -- we won't have to be worrying about that by then. Earth will have spoken.

[Exodus 3-14]

4. What is the Number?

They should post the current 'CO2' levels in the news everyday(just to get everyone aware and on the same page).

I mean, if you want to focus people(even create 100% employment globally- and end all Wars too), then addressing how to reduce CO2 now(and all it would encompass), is literally just 'One Thing' that will give us Salvation; what could be more easy?

[GoesTo11]

2. True, but Al Gore sighed.

[Exodus 3-14]

3. 'Run-Away' Climate

I keep struggling(more than a year) to tell people how the PPM #'358'(of CO2) was the critical number we should have reached by this past Nov. 13th 2007, but no one believes in 'Revelation'(Prophecy) anymore.
I'll just say that I never cared about the issue, and somehow I experienced what some call a 'Mystical' experience, and I was literally all of a sudden reading out of the Bible, and believed I was the 'Messiah'(yes, very weird experience, and a long story as to what happened afterward-- emotional breakdown, and lost job of 19 years).

Anyway, with '6' Prophecies coming true that I made in Dec. of 2006, and James Hanson undercutting the number that I beleive 'G-d' had shown me, I'm very worried.
'Eco-System' collapse is a horrible way to go, and its sad this issue is still being debated.

I'd say in about 2 years, people will understand something that they should have paid attention to long ago(don't fool with Mother Nature....."she bites back hard").

*I wonder if 'Clean Energy' can be taken from Sound that has been converted from Light(the reverse of Sono-Luminescence), and be our Salvation?

Jeff in Philadelphia