climate change and greenhouse gases

Protest the construction of new coal-fired power plants; eat a low-petroleum diet.

Hot enough for you? The effects of global warming could stay with us for a millennium or more.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found increased carbon dioxide emissions that lead to climate change cannot be reversed for 1,000 years.

THE DETAILS: Researchers from all over the world ran climate models and found that even if carbon dioxide emissions suddenly stopped, temperatures would remain high until about the year 3000. “We were very surprised,” says lead study author Susan Solomon, PhD, senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, CO. “I thought that the climate would recover in a 100 years or so if emissions were stopped, but we learned that the climate change lasts more than 1,000 years.”

Currently, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels stand at about 385 parts per million. If they increase to 450 to 600 ppm, areas of Europe, the southwestern United States, the Mediterranean, and Africa could become dust bowls, creating food and water shortages for many in the world. If twenty-first-century CO2 emissions exceed 600 ppm, the world could face an unalterable rise in sea level.

“We can’t reverse what we’ve done so far, but the fact that we won’t be able to reverse a mistake suggests to me that we should be especially careful about how much more carbon dioxide we choose to put into the atmosphere in the future,” Solomon says.