Anonymous Coward writes:
The BBC's 5 Live science podcast has a section on research at University College London (UCL) looking at the limits on fossil fuel consumption while meeting the goal of limiting to a 2°C Temperature rise by 2050 as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The interesting result is that we actually already have access to more fossil fuels than we could use according to the models available.
The authors show that the overwhelming majority of the huge coal reserves in China, Russia and the United States should remain unused along with over 260 thousand million barrels oil reserves in the Middle East, equivalent to all of the oil reserves held by Saudi Arabia. The Middle East should also leave over 60% of its gas reserves in the ground.
[...] Lead author Dr Christophe McGlade, Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources said: "We've now got tangible figures of the quantities and locations of fossil fuels that should remain unused in trying to keep within the 2°C temperature limit.
"Policy makers must realise that their instincts to completely use the fossil fuels within their countries are wholly incompatible with their commitments to the 2°C goal. If they go ahead with developing their own resources, they must be asked which reserves elsewhere should remain unburnt in order for the carbon budget not to be exceeded."
The research is being published in full in Nature (paywalled link only), and there is additional coverage in International Business Times, The Engineer and The Independent
