Climate Bathtub
The Climate Bathtub is the second in the series of concepts and shows how the level of green house gases in the atmosphere changes as the in-flow changes relative to the out-flow.
This is often a difficult concept for people to grasp particularly if they are not familiar with interpreting graphs. The Bathtub analogy has been found to be a good way of getting this concept across.
For people to truly understand why we are in a Climate Emergency they need to be comfortable with this concept.
Video
In this short video we explore the question “Why do we call it a Climate Emergency?“
Exploring Scenarios
We can use the Climate Bathtub concept to explore how effective different Climate Solutions scenarios might be; scenarios like the set of policies agreed at the recent COP26 Climate Summit. The infographic below combines the Bathtub concept with some graphs generated using the En-Roads simulator
If we input the measures agreed at COP26 into the simulator we generate a scenario which is similar to number 2 in our graphic – greenhouse gas emissions (red line) are pretty much stabilised but overall the CO2 level still rises and the planet still warms.
To achieve the goal of limiting warming to +1.5°C by 2100 we need to make bigger and more rapid reductions in emissions to reach a netZero point by 2050 at the latest – more like scenario 3 in our graphic. For a more detailed discussion on how this could be achieved take a look at our recent post Looking Up and Beyond to COP27.
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For further information and resources relating to this concept follow the link to the Resources Page
Climate Concepts 