TITLE:
Fair Plan 4: Safeguarding the Climate of “This Island Earth”
AUTHORS:
Michael E. Schlesinger, Michael J. Ring, Daniela Lindner, Emily Cross, Victoria Prince
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse-Gas Mitigation
JOURNAL NAME:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences,
Vol.4 No.3,
July
28,
2014
ABSTRACT: Earth is the only
habitable planet in the solar system and beyond in interstellar space for a distance
that would take us at least 80,000 years to traverse at the speed of Voyager 1.
Thus our home planet is “This Island Earth”. Here we use our Simple
(engineering-type) Climate Model to calculate the change in global-mean
near-surface air temperature from 1765 through the third millennium for historical emissions and two
scenarios of future emissions of greenhouse gases: (1) a Reference
scenario of unabated emissions, and (2) our Fair Plan scenario wherein
emissions are phased out to zero from 2020 to 2100. The temperature change for the
Reference cases increases to 5.2°C (9.4°F) in 2225 and remains there for at
least 40 human generations. By design, the temperature change for the Fair Plan
increases only to 2°C (3.6°F)—the limit adopted by the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change “to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system”—in 2082 and thereafter decreases through the remainder of the
millennium. Accordingly, we need to adopt the Fair Plan to safeguard the
climate of “This Island Earth”.