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243 comments on IEA WEO 2008 - Fossil Fuel Ultimates and CO2 Emissions Scenarios

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PriorityX on December 3, 2008 - 2:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Also remember that about two degrees of warming are being blocked by the aerosols from coal plants, aerosols that drop out of the atmosphere within days. When we shut down these dirty coal plants, as we must eventually, the planet is going to suddenly warm by two degrees. In other words, we are already past your projections.

Hi dohboi. Could you elaborate more on your comment above? Sounds like a huge dilemma. Leave them online and increase CO2 over the long term. Or shut them down with immediate consequences. No winners here by the sound of it.

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dohboi on December 4, 2008 - 12:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sorry to be so long in responding. There has been some discussion of this over at realclimate and in books like George Monbiot's _Heat_. I'll see if I can dig up some article-length sources on this for you (but others should please feel free to do so, too).

Yes, it is scary. It is the kind of thing that is driving otherwise sober minds to think about strategies that look like global engineering--artificially injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere (continually) while we close down coal plants....

Moral hazard and other human and non-human unintended consequences are great concerns with any such approach, of course.

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243 comments on IEA WEO 2008 - Fossil Fuel Ultimates and CO2 Emissions Scenarios

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