Certification / Why Carbon Negative
Carbon Emission Negative believes the time for carbon reduction or neutrality has long since passed.
As can be seen in the Petit data below, which is derived from ice core samples from Vostok station in East Antarctica, atmospheric composition and climate over the past four glacial-interglacial cycles (420,000 years) suggests we experience an ice age about every 100,000 years.
A posteriori reasoning would seem to also suggest a tipping point occurs when atmospheric CO2 reaches 280 to 300 parts per million (ppm), at which point, following a period of warming, some natural mechanism triggers an ice age.
As of 2007 atmospheric CO2 had reached 380 ppm, and is expected to reach 500 ppm by 2050.
And this was the point Vice President Gore was trying to emphasize in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, when he used a scissor lift to reach the CO2 peak on his PowerPoint presentation.
And it's an interesting point.
"Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago,"
Tripati says, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher and temperatures were at
least 3 degrees C warmer on average. "During the middle Miocene, an [epoch] in Earth's
history when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at values similar to what they are
today [330 to 500 ppm], the planet was much warmer, sea level was higher, there was
substantially less ice at the poles, and the distribution of rainfall was very different."
Further, "at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present," Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And "our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature"-indicative of a very sensitive climate.
-Biello, David. Just How Sensitive Is Earth's Climate to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide? Two new studies look far back in geologic time to determine how sensitive the global climate is to atmospheric CO2 levels. Scientific American Energy & Sustainability. October 8, 2009.
Further, "at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present," Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And "our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature"-indicative of a very sensitive climate.
-Biello, David. Just How Sensitive Is Earth's Climate to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide? Two new studies look far back in geologic time to determine how sensitive the global climate is to atmospheric CO2 levels. Scientific American Energy & Sustainability. October 8, 2009.
We cannot stop emitting carbon in the foreseeable future.
The best we can hope for, is to purchase our carbon back from those companies working to develop a renewable, sustainable energy economy, during this time of transition.
Most Americans pay waste management companies anywhere from $25 to $50 per month to collect and recycle their municipal solid waste. For about the same price, CEN will recycle all the carbon the average American will emit over the period of a year.
