What Is A Carbon Budget?
T oday’s blog post is about a carbon budget. What’s a carbon budget you ask? Well, it’s roughly based on the idea of an actual budget in a way, something we will get to shortly. For purposes of clarity, let me explain what a global carbon budget is. A global carbon budget is the processes of removal and absorption in the carbon cycle affected by mankind, that is, the quantities of carbon emissions released by human activities into the atmosphere as well as the amounts that are removed and absorbed into the oceans, land and plants. So these are specifically human led processes that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere such as burning fossils, cutting forests, agriculture. T hen there are those processes that absorb carbon like when it dissolves into the ocean, is absorbed by plants and stored in their trunks and later in the soil. So a global carbon budget measures the emissions released into the air as well as how much of it is subsequently removed /absorbed and stored. So