The carbon released from burning a gallon of gas—or any fossil fuel—heats the climate dramatically more than the heat given off during burning.
Think of a holiday road trip’s effect on the climate this way: The amount of heat a car contributes to the atmosphere because of its carbon emissions may be 100,000 times greater than the actual heat given off by its engine.
That’s the conclusion of a Carnegie Institution for Science published Tuesday that shows two things: Emissions from burning a lump of coal or a gallon of gas has an effect on the climate 100,000 times greater than the heat given off by burning the fossil fuel itself. And, the heat trapped by those emissions can be felt within just a few months of the fuel being burned. Burning fossil fuels is the globe’s of human-caused greenhouse gases and the primary cause of climate change.
“If a power plant is burning continuously, within three to five months, depending on the type of power plant, the carbon dioxide from the power plant is doing more to heat the earth than the fires in its boiler,” , a climate scientists at the Carnegie Institute and the study’s co-author, said. “As time goes on, the rate of burning in the power plant stays the same, but the carbon accumulates, so by the end of the year, the greenhouse gases will be heating the earth much more than the direct emissions of the power plant.”
Researchers unaffiliated with the study had mixed opinions about its significance.
“This is just a bizarre paper,” climate scientist , director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, adding that the effect of direct heating from burning fossil fuels is “completely trivial” on a global scale.
Penn State climate scientist called it “an interesting study from highly respected climate researchers” that highlights the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels quickly. There is uncertainty about how much the earth could warm between now and 2100 if the rate of greenhouse gas emissions remains unchanged, he said, but generally scientists agree that warming could fall somewhere between 3.5°F and 8°F.
Climate Central. The article was
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