Young People's Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions
James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, Karina von Schuckmann,, David J Beerling, Junji Cao, Shaun Marcott, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Michael, J Prather, Eelco J Rohling, Jeremy Shakun, Pete Smith

TL;DR
This paper emphasizes the urgent need for negative CO2 emissions to limit global warming and prevent irreversible climate impacts, highlighting the burden on future generations if high emissions persist.
Contribution
It demonstrates that current global temperatures exceed natural interglacial ranges, stressing the necessity of negative emissions and analyzing the risks and costs of CO2 extraction methods.
Findings
Global temperature now exceeds Holocene range.
Earth's temperature is as warm as during the last interglacial.
High costs and risks associated with CO2 extraction methods.
Abstract
Global temperature is a fundamental climate metric highly correlated with sea level, which implies that keeping shorelines near their present location requires keeping global temperature within or close to its preindustrial Holocene range. However, global temperature excluding short-term variability now exceeds +1degC relative to the 1880-1920 mean and annual 2016 global temperature was almost +1.3degC. We show that global temperature has risen well out of the Holocene range and Earth is now as warm as during the prior interglacial, when sea level reached 6-9 meters higher than today. Further, Earth is out of energy balance with present atmospheric composition, implying more warming is in the pipeline, and we show that the growth rate of greenhouse gas climate forcing has accelerated markedly in the past decade. The rapidity of ice sheet and sea level response to global temperature is…
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