A new study by Georgia Tech Professor Brian Stone in the Environmental Science & Technology journal concludes that "Mitigating climate change could be better achieved by regulating land use change than emissions reductions alone":
source: Stone, Land Use as Climate Change Mitigation
caption (first sentence only): Urban and rural temperature anomalies (5 year means) for 50 large U.S. metropolitan regions over the period of 1957-2006.
The study's press release quotes the author:
"Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming."No kidding--this is old news:
source: NASA's Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program
Except to Congressmen Waxman and Markey.
MORE:
Warming skeptic Princeton physics prof Freeman Dyson agrees at about 3:35 into this video.
(via Watts Up With That?, reader Marc D.)
No comments:
Post a Comment