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f Keynote Speech - Making Fossil Energy more Sustainable
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, Fourth EAGE CO2 Geological Storage Workshop, Apr 2014, cp-389-00015
- ISBN: 978-90-73834-79-8
Abstract
The climate on planet earth has been highly variable over time; consequently we have a wealth of geological data documenting nature’s response to variations in atmospheric CO2. Over the past 250 years, the earth’s average land surface temperatures have risen by 1.5oC, tracking the cool end of the Little Ice Age, followed by two periods of rapid temperature increases, one corresponding in time to the industrialization of Europe and North America (about 1850-1920), followed by the industrialization of the rest of the world (post-1950). So, we understand the physics of how CO2 traps incident solar long-wave radiation (heat), we have measured CO2 changes on many different time scales, and nature’s temperature archives document the resulting warming. Very little guesswork goes into the physics of global warming.