A Look at Climate Change and the Talks in Lima

There is an info-graphic put together by Friends of the Earth (FOE) in the UK that does an excellent job of summarizing the current state of atmospheric carbon. It locates us on a carbon timeline, showing how much carbon can safely be emitted before hitting the two degree Celsius level that many associate with catastrophic irreversible changes.

Basically, what the chart says is that we have a total “budget” of 3,000 GT of CO2 equivalents that can be emitted, of which two-thirds are already in the atmosphere as the result of fossil fuel burning since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Most of that was contributed by the industrialized countries of the Northern Hemisphere, despite the fact that they account for only one seventh of the global population.

To continue reading, click here

Image credit: bayucca: Flickr Creative Commons

RP Siegel, author and inventor, shines a powerful light on numerous environmental and technological topics. He has been published in business and technical journals and has written three books. His third, co-authored with Roger Saillant, is Vapor Trails, an eco-thriller that is being adapted for the big screen. RP is a professional engineer – and a prolific inventor, with 50 patents, numerous awards, and several commercial products. He is president of Rain Mountain LLC and is an active environmental advocate in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. In addition to Justmeans, he writes for Triple Pundit, ThomasNet News, and Energy Viewpoints, occasionally contributing to Mechanical Engineering, Strategy + Business, and Huffington Post. You can follow RP on Twitter, @RPSiegel.