Video: Ken Caldeira on limiting global temperature rise
- 17 Feb 2012, 18:00
- Verity Payne
Why switch from carbon intensive energy sources like coal
to lower-emissions options? The logic is that it's a necessary step
to stop global temperatures from continuing to rise. So it may have
come as a surprise to some yesterday to read this headline at the
Mail Online: '
Switch to low-carbon power sources 'risks making global
warming worse' study warns.
In fact, as we
pointed out, this headline only tells half
the story - a new
study actually suggests that switching from
coal to low-carbon energy can stabilise global temperature, it will
just take a few decades before this happens - a point made by one
of the authors Ken Caldeira in the video below.
Why? Largely because switching to 'green' energy means
building new green energy plants, and this emits a lot of
greenhouse gases, causing some additional warming. As you might
expect, once the green energy plants are up and running their
greenhouse gas emissions are substantially lower than coal plants,
so in the long run the change would obviously lessen global
warming.
The study also suggests that switching from coal to gas
power has remarkably little effect on limiting temperature rise. In
this video, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science,
one of the study's authors, explaining his research and its
findings: