- James Hansen et al (2011) – The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future – Columbia University – 04/05/2011 – Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPeople.pdf – 15 autores
“We describe scenarios that define how rapidly fossil fuel emissions must be phased down to restore Earth’s energy balance and stabilize global climate. A scenario that stabilizes climate and preserves nature is technically possible and it is essential for the future of humanity … If governments fail to adopt policies that cause rapid phase-down of fossil fuel emissions, today’s children, future generations, and nature will bear the consequences through no fault of their own. Governments must act immediately to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions to protect our children’s future and avoid loss of crucial ecosystem services, or else be complicit in this loss and its consequences.” - James Hansen (2011) – Perceptions of Climate Change – Columbia University Earth Institute – 27/03/2011 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies + Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110327_Perceptions.pdf
“Because, as we show in reference 4, the planet is now out of balance by about ¾ of a watt per square meter of Earth’s surface averaged over the solar cycle. It may not sound like much, but that is a lot of energy (in an interesting unit suggested in a colleague’s paper, Sarah Purkey and Greg Johnson?), the ¾ W/m2 corresponds, assuming a global populations of 7 billion, to every man, woman, and child on the planet running simultaneously 40 industrial strength 1400 watt hair dryers 24 hours a day 365 days a year). This energy is enough to cause the ocean to slowly warm and ice to melt all over the planet.” - James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato (2011) – Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change – Belgrade Milankovitch Symposium – 19/01/2011 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968.pdf
“We conclude that Earth in the warmest interglacial periods was less than 1°C warmer than in the Holocene and that goals of limiting human-made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster.” - James Hansen et al (2011) – Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications – Draft paper – 19/04/2011- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies + Columbia University Earth Institute – http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.1140.pdf – 14 autores
“We conclude that most climate models mix heat too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative forcing by human-made aerosols.” - James Hansen et al (2008) – Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? – The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2:217-231 – 01/02/2008- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf – 10 autores
“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted … CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm … If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects … This further 1.4 ºC warming still to come is due to the slow surface albedo feedback, specifically ice sheet disintegration and vegetation change.” - Council of the European Union (1996) – 1939th Council Meeting, Luxembourg – 25/06/1996
- European Commission – The 2 °C target – 09/07/200 – http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/docs/brochure_2c.pdf
“In order to meet the 2°C target with at least a 50% probability, atmospheric CO2eq concentration would need to be stabilised at approximately 440ppm or lower. Stabilisation at 400ppm CO2eq or lower would raise the probability of keeping the temperature increase below 2°C to above 66%.” - Conference of the Parties 15 – Copenhagen Accord – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – 18/12/2009 – http://unfccc.int/home/items/5262.php
“To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.” - James Hansen et al (2011) – The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future – Columbia University – 04/05/2011 – Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPeople.pdf – 14 autores
“The conclusion is that global warming of 1°C relative to 1880-1920 mean temperature (i.e., 0.75°C above the 1951-1980 temperature or 0.3°C above the 5-year running mean temperature in 2000), if maintained for long, is already close to or into the ‘dangerous’ zone. The suggestion that 2°C global warming may be a ‘safe’ target is extremely unwise based on critical evidence accumulated over the past three decades. Global warming of this amount would be putting Earth on a path toward Pliocene-like conditions, i.e., a very different world marked by massive and continual disruptions to both society and ecosystems.” - Harry J. Dowsett et al (1999) – Middle Pliocene Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction: PRISM2 – US Geological Survey – U.S. Geological Survey – http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1999/of99-535/ – 7 autores
“Important features of PRISM2 compared to modern are: 1. Greatly reduced continental ice volume with a small ice cap on Greenland being the only continental ice in the Northern Hemisphere; 2. Greatly reduced sea-ice with the Arctic being seasonally ice free; 3. Sea level change of + 25 meters which requires substantial reduction of the Antarctic Ice Sheet; 4. Increased SST in high latitudes and unchanged SST in low latitudes. Warming is most pronounced in the northeastern North Atlantic sector; 5. Expansion of evergreen forests to the margins of the Arctic Ocean, a reduction of desert area in equatorial Africa and essential elimination of polar desert and tundra regions in the Northern Hemisphere. A small amount of deciduous vegetation occurred at the edge of the Antarctic continent.” - James Hansen et al (2011) – Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications – Draft paper – 19/04/2011 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies + Columbia University Earth Institute – http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.1140.pdf – 14 autores
“Improving observations of ocean temperature confirm that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 ± 0.15 W/m2 during the 6-year period 2005-2010, provides fundamental verification of the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change. Observed surface temperature change and ocean heat gain constrain the net climate forcing and ocean mixing rates. We conclude that most climate models mix heat too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative forcing by human-made aerosols.” - James Hansen et al (2009) – Air Pollutant Climate Forcings within the Big Climate Picture – Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions – 11/03/2009 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2009/Copenhagen_20090311.pdf – 9 autores
- Sarah G. Purkey and Gregory C. Johnson (2010) – Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets – Journal of Climate 23:6336–6351 doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1 – December 2010 – School of Oceanography, University of Washington and NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, Washington – http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/gcj_3w.pdf
“Excepting the Arctic Ocean and Nordic seas, the rate of abyssal (below 4000 m) global ocean heat content change in the 1990s and 2000s is equivalent to a heat flux of 0.027 (±0.009) W m−2 applied over the entire surface of the earth.” - Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen (2008) – Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate – Global Biogeochemistry Cycles 22, GB3012 doi:10.1029/2007GB003142 – 17/03/2008 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2782
- James Hansen et al (2011) – The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future – Columbia University – 04/05/2011 – Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPeople.pdf – 15 autores
“Knowledge of Earth’s energy imbalance allows us to specify accurately how much CO2 must be reduced to restore energy balance and stabilize climate. CO2 must be reduced from the current level of 390 ppm to 360 ppm to increase Earth’s heat radiation to space by 0.5 W/m2, or to 345 ppm to increase heat radiation to space by 0.75 W/m2, thus restoring Earth’s energy balance and stabilizing climate.” - James Hansen et al (2011) – The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future – Columbia University – 04/05/2011 – Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPeople.pdf – 15 autores
“The conclusion is that global warming of 1°C relative to 1880-1920 mean temperature (i.e., 0.75°C above the 1951-1980 temperature or 0.3°C above the 5-year running mean temperature in 2000), if maintained for long, is already close to or into the ‘dangerous’ zone.” - James Hansen et al (2010) – Global Surface Temperature Change – Reviews of Geophysics 48, RG4004 doi:10.1029/2010RG000345 – 14/12/2010- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0601.pdf – 4 autores
“Of course it is possible to find almost any trend for a limited period via judicious choice of start and end dates of a data set that has high temporal resolution, but that is not a meaningful exercise. Even a more moderate assessment, «the trend in global surface temperature has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing due to the sum of the well-mixed greenhouse gases» [Solomon et al., 2009], is not supported by our data. On the contrary, we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.” - B. D. Stocker et al (2011) – Sensitivity of Holocene atmospheric CO2 and the modern carbon budget to early human land use: analyses with a process-based model – Biogeosciences 8:69-88 doi:10.5194/bg-8-69-2011 – 05/02/2011 – Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern – http://www.biogeosciences.net/8/69/2011/bg-8-69-2011.html – 3 autores
“Cumulative emissions are with 50GtC by 1850 and 177 GtC by 2004AD comparable to earlier estimates.” - Ted Trainer (2010) – Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case – Energy Policy 38:4107-4114 doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.037 – 07/05/2010 – Social Work, University of NSW, Australia – http://jayhanson.us/_Energy/TrainerRenewables.pdf
“Virtually all current discussion of climate change and energy problems proceeds on the assumption that technical solutions are possible within basically affluent-consumer societies. There is however a substantial case that this assumption is mistaken. This case derives from a consideration of the scale of the tasks and of the limits of non-carbon energy sources, focusing especially on the need for redundant capacity in winter. The first line of argument is to do with the extremely high capital cost of the supply system that would be required, and the second is to do with the problems set by the intermittency of renewable sources. It is concluded that the general climate change and energy problem cannot be solved without large scale reductions in rates of economic production and consumption, and therefore without transition to fundamentally different social structures and systems.” - Ottmar Edenhofer et al (2011) – Summary for Policy Makers. In IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation – Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change – 13/05/2011 – http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/srren-spm-fd4 – 37 autores
“The scenarios with the highest RE shares reach approximately 43% in 2030 and 77% in 2050.” - Matthew C. Hansen et al (2010) – Quantification of global gross forest cover loss – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0912668107 – 26/04/2010 – Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, South Dakota State University – 3 autores
“Gross forest cover loss (GFLC) was estimated to be 1,011,000 km2 from 2000 to 2005, representing 3.1% (0.6% per year) of the year 2000 estimated total forest area of 32,688,000 km2 … the majority of estimated GFCL for the boreal biome is due to a naturally induced fire dynamic”.” - Joseph Fargione et al (2008) – Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt – Science 319:1235-1238 doi:10.1126/science.1152747 – 29/02/2008 – The Nature Conservancy, Minneapolis; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota; Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota – http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADP308.pdf – 5 autores
“Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages.” - Timothy D. Searchinger et al (2009) – Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error – Science 326:527-528 doi:10.1126/science.1178797 – 23/10/2009 – Princeton University – http://www.energyjustice.net/files/biomass/searchinger.pdf – 13 autores
“This error, applied globally, would create strong incentives to clear land as carbon caps tighten … The potential of bioenergy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions inherently depends on the source of the biomass and its net land-use effects … Replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy does not by itself reduce carbon emissions, because the CO2 released by tailpipes and smokestacks is roughly the same per unit of energy regardless of the source (refs). Emissions from producing and/or refining biofuels also typically exceed those for petroleum (refs). Bioenergy therefore reduces greenhouse emissions only if the growth and harvesting of the biomass for energy captures carbon above and beyond what would be sequestered anyway and thereby offsets emissions from energy use.” - Rattan Lal (2004) – Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security – Science 304:1623-1627 doi:10.1126/science.1097396 – Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, The Ohio State University
“An increase of 1 ton of soil carbon pool of degraded cropland soils may increase crop yield by 20 to 40 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) for wheat, 10 to 20 kg/ha for maize, and 0.5 to 1 kg/ha for cowpeas. As well as enhancing food security, carbon sequestration has the potential to offset fossil-fuel emissions by 0.4 to 1.2 gigatons of carbon per year, or 5 to 15% of the global fossil-fuel emissions.” - Miguel A. Carriquiry et al (2011) – Second generation biofuels: Economics and policies – Energy Policy doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.04.036 – Published online: 17/04/2011 – Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University – http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/08/30/000158349_20100830090558/Rendered/PDF/WPS5406.pdf – 3 autores
“Agricultural residues: greenhouse gas emissions associated with direct and indirect land use changes are … avoided, improving a fuel’s carbon balance … crop residues are important … and to sequester carbon in soils … The first factor [(that) restrict(s) the potential use of residues] is the economic costs of transportation.” - Johan Rockström et al (2009) – Future water availability for global food production: The potential of green water for increasing resilience to global change – Water Resources Research 45, W00A12, doi:10.1029/2007WR006767 – 1402/2009 – Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University; Stockholm Environment Institute – 6 autores
«While past strategies for agricultural water management have focused on irrigation (use of blue water), this paper demonstrates the dominance of green water in food production … For 2050, the scenario indicates that 59% of the world population will face blue water shortage, and 36% will face green and blue water shortage. Even under climate change, good options to build water resilience exist without further expansion of cropland, particularly through management of local green water resources that reduces risks for dry spells and agricultural droughts.»
- Christine Ehlig-Economides and Michael J. Economides (2010) – Sequestering carbon dioxide in a closed underground volume – Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 70:123-130 doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2009.11.002 – 28/04/2010 – Department of Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M University; Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Houston – http://twodoctors.org/manual/economides.pdf
“The implications of this work are profound … Neither of these bodes well for geological CO2 sequestration and the findings of this work clearly suggest that it is not a practical means to provide any substantive reduction in CO2 emissions, although it has been repeatedly presented as such by others.» - Quanlin Zhou and Jens T. Birkholzer (2011) – On scale and magnitude of pressure build-up induced by large-scale geologic storage of CO2 – Greenhouse Gas Science and Technology 1:11–20 DOI:10.1002/ghg3 – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – 17/02/2011
“These studies show that the limiting effect of pressure build-up on dynamic storage capacity is not as signifi cant as suggested by Ehlig-Economides and Economides, who considered closed systems without any attenuation effects.» - Jim Snyder and Christopher Martin – Ameren’s Coal Carbon-Capture Plant Gets $1 Billion From Obama – Bloomberg – 06/08/2010 – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/clean-coal-project-in-illinois-gets-1-billion-from-obama-administration.html
“The Obama administration pledged $1 billion in stimulus funds to capture carbon emissions from a coal-fired Ameren Corp. power plant in Illinois, the biggest U.S. effort to show the polluting fuel can be made cleaner. The FutureGen 2.0 project will revamp a 200-megawatt unit at Ameren’s plant in Meredosia, Illinois, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Babcock & Wilcox Co. and a group of energy companies are participants in the plan.” - Norway and coal – Sourcewatch – 01/10/2010 – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Norway_and_coal
“In September 2010, it was reported that building a carbon capture and storage (CCS) test centre at the Statoil-operated Mongstad refinery in Norway will cost nearly nine times as much as planned. The budget for the CCS facility, considered by the International Energy Agency as a key technology to fight climate change, has risen to 6 billion crowns ($1.02 billion) from 700 million estimated in 2006, according to Dagens Naeringsliv.” - B. Metz et al (2005) – IPCC special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage – Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change – http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_wholereport.pdf – Working Group III
“Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by 25%-40%.[2] These and other system costs are estimated to increase the cost of energy from a new power plant with CCS by 21-91%.” - James Lovelock (2006) – La venjança de Gaia – Columna Edicions, Barcelona – ISBN: 978-84-6640792-2
“Vivim un temps en què les emocions i els sentiments compten més que no pas la veritat, i impera un enorme desconeixement de la ciència. Hem deixat que els escriptors de ciència ficció i els grups de pressió ecologistes explotessin la por a l’energia nuclear i de pràcticament qualsevol avenç científic nou, de la mateixa manera que l’Església va explotar la por de l’infern no fa gaire temps enrere.” - Palle Bendsen and Kim Ejlertsen (2010) – An assessment of cumulative CO2 reductions from carbon capture and storage at coal fuelled plants in a carbon constrained world – Ejlertsen, Energy and Climate Group, NOAH Friends of the Earth Denmark – http://www.iea.org/Papers/2009/CCS_Roadmap.pdf
“The mitigation potential of CCS on coal is insignificant. Only 11% of the cumulative emissions before 2050 will be avoided. Emissions of 356 Gt CO2 to the atmosphere despite a fast deployment of CCS will burst the 2o Celsius CO2-budget. CCS cannot contribute to bring down the global emissions in time to avoid a 2o Celsius increase in global temperature. In the next 20 years only 7 Gt CO2 will be avoided despite deployment of CCS.” - B. Metz et al (2005) – IPCC special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage – Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change – http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_wholereport.pdf – Working Group III
“Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by 25%-40%.[2] These and other system costs are estimated to increase the cost of energy from a new power plant with CCS by 21-91%.” - Samuel K. Moore – The Water Cost of Carbon Capture – IEEE Spectrum – 01/06/2010 – http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/the-water-cost-of-carbon-capture –
“But the technology needed to capture carbon has a huge downside: It could nearly double the amount of water a plant uses for every kilowatt of electricity it delivers—easily erasing any gains from techniques aimed at conserving water. «This technology was not developed in a water-constrained environment,» says Jared Ciferno, technology manager for the existing plants program of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). «The bottom line is that [carbon] capture takes energy, and that translates to additional water use.» Just how much water is pretty shocking. By 2030, the addition of carbon-capture technology would boost water consumption in the U.S. electricity sector by 80 percent, or about 7500 megaliters per day, according to research at NETL.” - Robert F. Service (2009) – Another Biofuels Drawback: The Demand for Irrigation – Science 326:516-517 doi:10.1126/science.326_516 – 23/10/2009- Pacific Northwest Bureau – http://rtecrtp.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/science-article-on-biofuels-water-usage.pdf
“At first blush, it’s easy to make the case for biofuels. By converting crops into ethanol or biodiesel, farmers can reduce demand for imported oil, lower national dependence on authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and potentially cut greenhouse gas emissions. But dig a little deeper, and the story gets more complicated. Biofuels promise energy and climate gains, but in some cases, those improvements wouldn’t be dramatic. And they come with some significant downsides, such as the potential for increasing the price of corn and other food staples. Now, a series of recent studies is underscoring another risk: A widespread shift toward biofuels could pinch water supplies and worsen water pollution. In short, an increased reliance on biofuel trades an oil problem for a water problem.” - Kevin R. Fingerman et al (2009) – Water Impacts of Biofuel Extend Beyond Irrigation – Science 326:516-517 – 03/02/2010 – Energy and Resources Group, University of California – 3 autores
“A common definition of water consumption, or ‘depletion,’ includes all processes that render water unavailable for the remainder of the hydrologic cycle (ref). In the case of agriculture, this means all crop evapotranspiration. This expanded perspective reveals important dynamics that are not considered in Service’s story … the metric of applied irrigation water can over- or underestimate embedded water in biofuels, and is not a sufficient metric for characterizing the effect of crop growth on available water resources.” - Miguel A. Carriquiry et al (20110 – Second generation biofuels: Economics and policies – Energy Policy doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.04.036 – Published online: 17/04/2011 – Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University – http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2010/08/30/000158349_20100830090558/Rendered/PDF/WPS5406.pdf – 3 autores
“Cost is a major barrier to its commercial production in the near to medium term … second generation biofuels will come at a very high capital cost, over five times that of similar capacity starch ethanol plants.” - Rattan Lal (2008) – Food Insecurity’s Dirty Secret – Science 332:673-674 DOI:10.1126/science.322.5902.673 – 31/10/2008 – Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, The Ohio State University – http://tinread.usb.md:8888/tinread/fulltext/lal/food.pdf
“The strong relationship between soil degradation and survival of the past civilizations (ref) cannot be ignored. If soils are not restored, crops will fail even if rains do not; hunger will perpetuate even with emphasis on biotechnology and genetically modified crops; civil strife and political instability will plague the developing world even with sermons on human rights and democratic ideals; and humanity will suffer even with great scientific strides. Political stability and global peace are threatened because of soil degradation, food insecurity, and desperation. The time to act is now.» - Kersti Johansson et al (2010) – Agriculture as provider of both food and fuel – Ambio 39:91-99 doi:10.1007/s13280-010-0017-4 – 40284 – Uppsala University, Global Energy Systems, Department of Physics and Astronomy – http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Ambio_Agriculture.pdf – 4 autores
“The net energy contents for the world and EU27 was found to be 7200-9300 and 430 TWh respectively, to be compared with food requirements of 7100 and 530 TWh. Clearly, very little, or nothing, remains for biofuel from agricultural primary crops. However, by using residues and bioorganic waste, it was found that biofuel production could theoretically replace one fourth of the global consumption of fossil fuels for transport.” - Óscar Carpintero (2007) – Pautas de consumo, desmaterialización y nueva economía: entre la realidad y el deseo – Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona – 23/06/2007 – http://www.cccb.org/rcs_gene/carpintero.pdf
“La carne ganadera en España representa sólo el 15% del total de la ingesta los kilogramos ingeridos en 1995, pero supone casi el 50% de la huella terrestre alimentaria (excluido el pescado).” - Elke Stehfest et al (2008) – Climate benefits of changing diet – Climatic Change 95:83-102 doi:10.1007/s10584-008-9534-6 – Published online: 04/02/2009 – Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Global Sustainability and Climate – http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/StehfestClimate.pdf – 6 autores
“A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.” - Robert Socolow et al (2011) – Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Chemicals – American Physics Society – 28/04/2011 – APS Panel on Public Affairs – http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=244407 – 13 autores
“The cost of this system is estimated to be of the order of $60o or more per metric ton of CO2 … A typical contactor will capture about 20 tons of CO2 per year for each square meter of area through which the air flows … Even if costs fall significantly, coherent CO2 mitigation would result in the deployment of DAC [Direct Air Capture] only after nearly all significant point sources of fossil CO2 emissions are eliminated.” - Richard T. Conant (2011) – Sequestration through forestry and agriculture – Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change doi:10.1002/wcc.101 – 10/02/2011 – Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University; Institute for Sustainable Resources, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
“Options for sequestering carbon in forests can be understood in terms of ecosystem recovery from disturbance: growing forests in land formerly forested (reforestation) or not (afforestation); lengthening the time between disturbances or enhancing productivity of forests (e.g., through forest management); and suppressing disturbance to keep forest carbon stocks intact (e.g., fire suppression). Similarly, reducing emissions from deforestation (RED) or from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is an effort to maintain carbon stocks by slowing or eliminating human-induced disturbance.36 REDD is a reduction in emissions rather than carbon sequestration. But, many of the same benefits, detractions, and policy challenges apply. Other forest-related activities can reduce emissions (e.g., using renewable forest biomass resources to offset fossil fuel use) or enhance the life of wood products, but those are beyond the scope of this review.” - Andrew A. Lacis et al (2010) – Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature – Science 330:356-359 doi:10.1126/science.1190653 – 14/10/2010 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/lacis101015.pdf – 4 autores
“Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere. This is because CO2, like ozone, N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons, does not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere at current climate temperatures, whereas water vapor can and does. Non-condensing greenhouse gases … account for 25% of the total terrestrial greenhouse effect” - James Hansen et al (2000) – Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 97:9875-9880 – 29/08/2000 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – http://ccsl.iccip.net/gwittfc.pdf – 5 autores
“If sources of CH4 and O3 precursors were reduced in the future, the change in climate forcing by non-CO2 GHGs in the next 50 years could be near zero. Combined with a reduction of black carbon emissions and plausible success in slowing CO2 emissions, this reduction of non-CO2 GHGs could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming.” - Brian Walker et al (2009) – Looming Global-Scale Failures and Missing Institutions – Science 325:1345-1346 – 11/09/2009 – CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia – http://sei-us.org/Publications_PDF/SEI-Science-LoomingGlobalScaleFailures-09.pdf – 20 autores
“The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations when individuals and nations will collectively gain if they cooperate, but each faces a temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others … Transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by international competition and recalcitrance … New and reformed institutions are needed for facilitating a change in human behaviour … this change … assumes acceptance of a common international norm of energy use.” - Nathan Pelletier (2010) – Of laws and limits: An ecological economic perspective on redressing the failure of contemporary global environmental governance – Global Environmental Change 20:220–228 doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.12.006 – Accepted: 15/12/2009 – School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University
“Proceeding from the perspective of ecological economics, it is further argued that achieving environmental sustainability in industrial society requires foremost that we restructure and constrain the scale of economic activities relative to global biocapacity. It is concluded that a scale-based approach to governing the environmental commons, operationalized by a strong world environment organization, offers at least a partial solution to this conundrum.” - James Zachos et al (2001) – Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present – Science 292:686-693 doi:10.1126/science.1059412 – 27/04/2001 – Earth Sciences Department, University of California, Santa Cruz – http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/jan18/Zachosetal.pdf – 5 autores
“Since 65 million years ago (Ma), Earth’s climate has undergone a significant and complex evolution, the finer details of which are now coming to light through investigations of deep-sea sediment cores. This evolution includes … rare rapid aberrant shifts and extreme climate transients with durations of 103 to 105 years. Here, recent progress in defining the evolution of global climate over the Cenozoic Era is reviewed. We focus primarily on the periodic and anomalous components of variability over the early portion of this era, as constrained by the latest generation of deep-sea isotope records. We also consider how this improved perspective has led to the recognition of previously unforeseen mechanisms for altering climate.” - James Hansen et al (2011) – The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future – Columbia University – 40667 – Columbia University Earth Institute, New York – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPeople.pdf – 15 autores
“In contrast to scenarios with continued BAU emissions, Figure 6 (a) shows the scenario with 6% per year decrease of fossil fuel CO2 emissions and 100 GtC reforestation in the period 2031-2080. This scenario yields additional global warming of ~0.3°C. Global temperature relative to the 1880-1920 mean would barely exceed 1°C and would remain above 1°C for only about 3 decades. Thus this scenario provides the prospect that young people, future generations, and other life on the planet would have a chance of residing in a world similar to the one in which civilization developed.”
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