"Man-made Climate Change is Here to Stay"
For as long as we emit CO2 into the atmosphere by burning
fossil
fuels the CO2 concentration will continue to go up.
Careful land use
management practices may slow the rate of increase, but
the
essential problem is that the carbon added to the rapidly
exchanging
pools, the atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans, will not
disappear
from those pools for many thousands of years. So
far we have seen
only the beginning of the enhanced radiative forcing
of the climate
by CO2. Specific predictions of how high atmospheric
CO2 will go
in the future are still difficult because climate change
itself,
and how it interacts with biological processes, may change
the
partitioning of carbon between the three mobile reservoirs.
The
scope of exploitation and management of the earth's resources
by
us has grown steadily over many generations, and has
now become
global. Climate will have to be included in our
management.