Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature

We assess climate impacts of global warming using ongoing observations and paleoclimate data. We use Earth's measured energy imbalance, paleoclimate data, and simple representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on today's young people, future generations, and nature. A cumulative industrial-era limit of ∼500 GtC fossil fuel emissions and 100 GtC storage in the biosphere and soil would keep climate close to the Holocene range to which humanity and other species are adapted. Cumulative emissions of ∼1000 GtC, sometimes associated with 2°C global warming, would spur "slow" feedbacks and eventual…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• EF
  Energy Foundation
• RF
  Rockefeller Family Fund
• SR
  Sight Research UK

  Awards: NE/I009906/1, NE/H004424/1
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Awards: NE/H004424/1, NE/I009906/1