More on just how bad global warming could be

A University of Colorado professor says we need to do reverse sequestration ― actually removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere ― to have any hope of slowing down global warming. And, even then, he’s just talking about slowing it down, not stopping it.

Tom Yulsman, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, provides the details of research by himself and various climate modelers:

Modeling by Tom Wigley (at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder) shows that even if Kyoto were fully implemented, including by the U.S., and all countries met their goals out to the year 2100, the impact on climate change would be minimal. So Kyoto is not nearly enough. At best, it’s a first step. …

(Jim White says): “The bad news is that climate change is on its way. And the really bad news is that you can’t stop it. It’s like a freight train. … So for the next 50 years or so, the Earth is going to warm up. … In the last few years it has become very apparent to me that simply not emitting greenhouse gases won’t work. The point of no return for climate change has passed.”

(White) says … not only will we have to remove carbon dioxide from flue gases, become much more efficient, use biofuels, switch to solar energy, etc., but we will also have to remove carbon dioxide that we’ve already put into the atmosphere.

Jim is a level-headed, serious scientist who is not prone to over-dramatization. So when someone like him says we should think about ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere — a kind of super sequestration — then you know we’ve got a problem.

Jim joins Tom Wigley in advocating what some might regard as radical and fuzzy-headed responses. Wigley, a respected climate modeler, recently suggested that we consider adding aerosols to the atmosphere to block incoming solar radiation as a way to combat global warming. (Talk about risking unintended consequences!) I took this as an indication of the seriousness with which he views the situation. … There is an array of responses we could consider, including some that might have seemed crazy just a year or so ago.

When a climatologist talks about deliberately seeding the sky with aerosols (aerosols from pollution, such as particulate pollutants from power plants, diesel engines, etc.) have been demonstrated in climate modeling to have kept our current global warming from being even worse than it is) you know this is serious.