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Share This It is common practice in climate policy to bundle the climate warming pollutants together and express their total effects in terms of “CO2 equivalence”. It is common practice in climate policy to bundle the climate warming pollutants together and express their total effects in terms of “CO2 equivalence”. This ‘equivalence’ is based on a comparison of climate effects on a 100-year timescale. This approach is problematic, as IASS scientist Kathleen Mar explains in a new research paper: “The fact is that climate forcers simply aren’t ‘equivalent’ – their effects on climate and ecosystems are distinct. Short-lived climate forcers have the largest impact on near-term climate whereas CO2 has the largest impact on long-term climate.” The use of a 100-year time horizon as the primary basis for evaluating climate effects understates the impacts of short-lived climate-forcing pollutants (SLCPs) and thus undervalues the positive near-term effects th ....