Our future: more of the blue stuff, less of the white. (credit: NASA)
It has been decades since we recognized the threat of climate change, yet very few governments have instituted policies that address the threat. The first strong international agreement was only established very recently. Meanwhile, the companies that supply fossil fuels continue to push exploration for new supplies.
Under those circumstances, it's fair to consider what would happen if the burning of fossil fuel continued unabated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change typically considers a scenario in which fossil fuel use continues along its current trends until the end of the century. But a new study examines what would happen if the burning of fossil fuels continues for centuries and we gobble up a conservative estimate of everything that's left to extract. That study suggests that the future is going to be significantly warmer than we might have expected.
Carbon dioxide's warming influence doesn't go up in a linear fashion as its concentration increases. Once an infrared photon gets absorbed, it can't be absorbed again, no matter how many additional carbon dioxide molecules are present. So, as concentrations go up, the warming influence tails off. This is generally approximated by saying that each doubling of the gas' concentration has about the same warming effect.
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