TITLE:
Fair Plan 6: Quo Vadis the 80%-Emission-Reduction-By-2050 Plan?
AUTHORS:
Michael E. Schlesinger, Michael Ring, Emily Cross
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, Mitigation
JOURNAL NAME:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences,
Vol.5 No.2,
April
29,
2015
ABSTRACT: In our Fair Plan 5 paper, we compared the CO2 emissions of the
80%-Emission-Reduction-By-2050 (80/50) Plan
with the CO2 emissions of our Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth’s
Climate. We found that the 80/50 Plan reduced CO2 emissions
more rapidly than necessary to achieve the principal objective of the Fair
Plan: to keep Global Warming (GW) within the 2℃ (3.6℉) limit adopted by the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “to prevent dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. Here, we ask the “What If”
question: “What would the GW of the 80/50 Plan be post 2100 if its CO2 emissions post 2100 were kept at their 2100 value?” We find that although the
GW of the 80/50 Plan decreases slightly over part of the 21st century, it does
not remain constant thereafter. Rather, the GW of the 80/50 Plan begins to
increase in 2088, exceeds that of the Fair Plan beginning in 2230, exceeds the
2℃ (3.6℉) limit of the UNFCCC in 2596, and ends the millennium at 2.7℃ (4.8℉). Thus, not only does the 80/50 Plan phase out humanity’s CO2 emissions faster than necessary to fulfill the UNFCCC constraint, it also fails
that constraint if its CO2 emissions post 2100 are kept at their
2100 value. Accordingly, we believe that the Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth’s Climate
is superior to the 80/50 Plan.