AGU 2012 - Watson Presentation

 

src: AGU videos

 

  The AGU 2012 Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture by Sir Robert Watson focused on gobal warming. He said that we will probably not make the 2°C goal for global warming but that a 5°C world would be more likely. Other conclusions were that reducing green house gases was a management issue. The world price for rice in a warmer world would increase due to reduced productivity and greater demand. We would have to depend more on renewable energy but that would not be enough and so we might have to rely more on nuclear energy but the damage to the Japanese reactor as a result of the tsunami would hinder progress in that direction. The current growth in CO₂ emissions is primarily due to China's contribution while emissions in the US and Europe have been relatively constant but he also noted that the US has the highest contribution per person.