Nature as metric- a proposed alternative measure for climate change potential
Creators: name: F. DeGroff
Publisher: name: F1000Research
Year: 2016

description: Anthropogenic changes to non-anthropogenic carbon fluxes are a primary driver of climate change. There currently exists no comprehensive metric to measure and value anthropogenic changes in carbon flux between all states of carbon.<br> <br>Focusing on atmospheric carbon emissions as a measure of anthropogenic activity on the environment ignores the fungible characteristics of carbon that are crucial in both the biosphere and the worldwide economy. Focusing on a single form of inorganic carbon as a proxy metric for the plethora of anthropogenic activity and carbon compounds will prove inadequate, convoluted, and unmanageable. A broader, more basic metric is needed to capture the entire of carbon activity.<br> <br>We propose a new metric to measure changes in the temporal distance of any form or state of carbon from one state to another. Such a metric would be especially useful to measure the temporal distance of carbon from sinks such as the atmosphere or oceans. The effect of changes in carbon flux as a result of any human activity can be measured by the difference between the anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic temporal distance.  The change in the temporal distance is a measure of the climate change potential much like voltage is a measure of electrical potential. The integral of the climate change potential is proportional to the anthropogenic climate change.<br> <br>The term climate change potential is defined as the measure of any anthropogenic change in any temporal distance of any carbon. The term carbon quality (cq) is defined as the non-anthropogenic temporal distance for a particular state of carbon from a particular carbon sink such as the atmosphere or ocean. A change in cq represents the change in the temporal distance of any carbon from a particular carbon sink such as the atmosphere or ocean. The longer a particular form of carbon spends in a particular state, the higher the cq. Anthropogenic changes in cq are proportional to the inverse of anthropogenic changes in carbon mass flux. As carbon mass flux increases, the corresponding cq will decrease, and vice versa.<br> <br>We also propose a logarithmic vector scale for cq as a measure of anthropogenic changes in carbon flux. The distance between the cq vector starting and ending temporal distances represents the change in cq. A base-10 logarithmic scale would allow the addition and subtraction of exponents to calculate changes in cq.<br> <br>As anthropogenic activity changes the temporal distance of carbon, the change in cq is measured as: cq = ß ( log10 [mean carbon temporal distance] ) where ß represents the carbon price coefficient for a particular country. For any country, cq measures the climate change potential for any domestic anthropogenic activity that results in a change in temporal distance of any carbon. The greater the carbon fees for a country, the larger the ß coefficient would be, and the greater the import fees would be to achieve carbon parity on imports from countries with lower carbon fees.<br> <br>By assessing embodied carbon within imports for carbon parity with domestic production, cq would eliminate the incentives to use spatial shifts in carbon emissions to avoid carbon fees. Similarity, cq would modulate the incentives to use temporal displacement of carbon emissions, such as the exhausting of carbon cognates and carbon sequestration, while eliminating the need for carbon credits.<br>