Media

Live countdown to the trillionth tonne

22 October 2009

A new website launched on Thursday by Oxford University tracks how fast we are approaching total global emissions of a trillion tonnes of carbon – a level which, if reached, recent research suggests will result in dangerous global warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius.
 
trillionthtonne.org, hosted by the Oxford e-Research Centre, currently predicts that the trillionth tonne will be reached in March 2045, but this date is advancing as manmade carbon emissions gradually accelerate.
 
The launch of the website coincides with a one tonne heap of anthracite coal – representing the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere through human activity since industrialisation began – going on display at the Science Museum in London. The display is launched alongside ‘Prove It! All the evidence you need to believe in climate change’, a new Science Museum exhibit on the facts about climate change and the Copenhagen conference. At the launch Ed Miliband MP and David Miliband MP will present a new climate change map.
 
‘The trillionth tonne symbolises the way carbon dioxide emissions accumulate in the atmosphere,’ said Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, who proposed the idea based on a paper he and co-authors published in Nature earlier this year. ‘It is sobering to think that it could be vaporised into carbon dioxide within my lifetime, committing the Earth to a most likely warming of more than two degrees, widely regarded as a threshold for the most dangerous impacts of climate change.’
 
Dr Allen said: ‘If we make deep cuts in emissions, perhaps our children will be able to show their grandchildren the trillionth tonne. But even that will not be enough: because of their cumulative effect on climate, net carbon dioxide emissions eventually have to cease altogether. Only when our great, great, great grandchildren are still gazing at the trillionth tonne, sitting safely intact in the Science Museum in 150 years time, will the saga of human-induced climate change be passing into history.’
 
In April 2009 a team led by Oxford University scientists showed how emitting carbon dioxide slower will not prevent dangerous climate change unless it involves phasing out carbon dioxide emissions altogether, before we reach an upper limit of one trillion tonnes of carbon. Two studies published in Nature showed that the risk of dangerous climate change is primarily determined by the accumulation of carbon dioxide emissions over time, not by short-term emission rates.
 
For more information contact Dr Myles Allen on email myles.allen@physics.ox.ac.uk 

Alternatively contact the University of Oxford Press Office on +44 (0)1865 283877 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk 

For more information about the Science Museum contact Andrew Marcus, Science Museum Press Office on +44 (0)207 9424357 or email andrew.marcus@sciencemuseum.org.uk 

Notes to Editors

  • The website can be viewed at http://trillionthtonne.org/
  • The tonne heap of anthracite coal will be on display in the Science Museum’s contemporary science hub, the Wellcome Wing. The Science Museum is open every day, except Christmas Day and Boxing Day, from 10.00 to 18.00 and is free to visit. Further information is available from: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk.
  • The first study in Nature (April 2009), led by Dr Myles Allen from Oxford’s Department of Physics shows that total cumulative emissions of one trillion tonnes of carbon (1 Tt C, or 3,670 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide­) over the entire ‘anthropocene’ period 1750-2500 causes a most likely peak warming of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Most of the world’s governments are committed to avoiding warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius.
  • A second study in Nature (April 2009), led by Dr Malte Meinshausen from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research and co-authored by Dr Allen and Dr David Frame from the Oxford University Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, finds that a total emission budget of about 0.9 Tt C gives a best-estimate peak warming by 2100 of 2 degrees Celsius, including the effects of other human influences on climate. This budget drops to less than 0.75 Tt C (equivalent to 1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2000 and 2050) if the risk of temperatures exceeding 2 degrees Celsius is limited to one-in-four.
  • ‘Save the trillionth tonne’ research news release: http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_releases_for_journalists/090428.html
  • Further information about ‘Prove It! All the evidence you need to believe in climate change’ at the Science Museum is available from www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.