Emission: Impossible

Okay, climate change skeptics, take your best shot. You want a piece of this? If y'all think that reducing emissions will wreck the American economy, what do you think that ELIMINATING them entirely would do? Well, that's what two scientists suggest in a recently released study, which states that man-made greenhouse gas emissions will have to be eliminated in order to stabilize global temperatures and ward off climate change.

The study, conducted by H. Damon Matthews of Concordia University in Montreal and Ken Caldeira of Stanford University, appears in a recent issue of the Geophysical Research Letters journal.

"Our results suggest that future [man-made] emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize global-mean temperatures," the authors wrote. "Any future emissions will commit the climate system to warming that is essentially irreversible over several centuries."

This is a far more extreme position than that taken by other scientists, who more commonly recommend only a significant reduction in the heat-trapping emissions fueled by the burning of such fossil fuels as coal and natural gas.

As a species, how far are we from reducing carbon emissions to zero? Could we live without burning fossil fuels, which essentially power the world? Are these scientists visionaries or crackpots? Leave your comments below.

(Photo of a coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, Kan., by Charlie Riedel, AP)

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