The research is conclusive. Only a zero carbon economy can stop the rise of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to dangerous levels. Yet, these findings, and the researchers who publish them, are being ignored.

...only in the case of essentially complete elimination of emissions can the atmospheric concentration of CO₂... be stabilised at a constant level.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007

The IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report asks the question, "If emissions of Greenhouse gases are reduced, how quickly do their concentrations in the atmosphere decrease?" (Question 10.3).

While more than half of the CO₂ emitted is currently removed from the atmosphere within a century, some fraction (about 20%) of emitted CO₂ remains in the atmosphere for millennia.

Because of the slow removal process, atmospheric CO₂ will continue to increase in the long term even if its emission is substantially reduced from its present levels. In fact, only in the case of essentially complete elimination of emissions can the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ ultimately be stabilized at a constant level.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007

In February 2008, the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology (DGE) reported that global warming will be here for the next 500 years, even with zero carbon emissions.

Ken Caldeira and Damon Matthews used an Earth system model at the DGE to simulate the response of the Earth's climate to different levels of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 500 years.

They found that, to prevent the Earth from heating further, carbon dioxide emissions would, effectively, need to be eliminated.

Think of it as if the Earth were in a pot of water on a heating element. Water is very good at retaining heat, so it continues to warm for a while after the heat source is turned off.

Earth, with its large volumes of water, also retains heat. In this case, the heat is kept in even longer by the insulating blanket of greenhouse gases.

Caldeira and Matthews investigated how much climate changes as a result of each individual emission of carbon dioxide, and found that each increment of emission leads to another increment of warming.

So, quite simply, to avoid additional warming, we have to avoid additional emissions.

With emissions set to zero in the simulations, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere slowly fell as carbon "sinks" such as the oceans and land vegetation absorbed the gas. The model predicted that global temperatures would remain high for at least 500 years after carbon dioxide emissions ceased. [The latest models indicate that the time span is over 1000 years.]

Just as an iron skillet will stay hot and keep cooking after the stove burner is turned off, heat held in the oceans will keep the climate warm even as the heating effect of greenhouse gases diminishes. Adding more greenhouse gases, even at a rate lower than today, would worsen the situation. The effects would persist for centuries.

Global carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are both growing at record rates. Even if we could freeze emissions at today's levels, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would continue to increase. If we could stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, the Earth would continue heating up.

Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2007GL032388

In 1990, the IPCC published Anthropogenic CO₂ Production. It reported that the amount of atmospheric carbon varies directly with human-mande carbon dioxide production. That is, the more CO₂ the global economy produces, the more atmospheric carbon surrounding Earth like a blanket.

The report indicated that only at zero carbon dioxide emissions would we begin to reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon. So as far back as 1990, scientists have known that we will need a zero carbon economy if we are to protect the planet from runaway heating.

Most scientists and all environmentalists are failing to sound the alarm over runaway global heating and failing to say that we must go to zero CO₂ to avoid this catastrophe. And those who do sound the alarm are being ignored.

Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester in Manchester, UK published Reframing the Climate Change Challenge in Light of Post-2000 Emission Trends in 2008...

The 2007 Bali conference heard repeated calls for reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 50 per cent by 2050 to avoid exceeding the 2.0°C threshold. While such endpoint targets dominate the policy agenda, they do not, in isolation, have a scientific basis and are likely to lead to dangerously misguided policies. To be scientifically credible, policy must be informed by an understanding of cumulative emissions and associated emission pathways.

Given the reluctance, at virtually all levels, to openly engage with the unprecedented scale of both current emissions and their associated growth rates, even an optimistic interpretation of the current framing of climate change implies that stabilization much below 650 ppmv CO₂e is improbable (4° C by 2100).

This is the deadly legacy being left to today's children.