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14 comments on Beginnings of UK “Oil Age”

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Chris Vernon on January 3, 2007 - 8:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is generally regarded as requiring a 60% decrease in in CO2 output from 1990's levels, which would be 24 MPD by 2050.

Ah but oil is a pretty small amount of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions. See this graph from the James Hansen article:

That shows the cumulative atmospheric concentration of CO2 from each fuel with a peak oil/gas very roughly around 2030. There just isn't enough oil/gas to get to past 400ppmv. Climate change is all about the coal and non-conventional oils in my mind. In fact I'm not convinced non-conventional oils are ever going to economically scale up so maybe it's really just about the coal.

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TheTransition on January 3, 2007 - 10:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks very much! This is most informative.

This also seems to illustrate "Peak Coal" at 2050.

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Valuethinker on January 4, 2007 - 1:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I am not sure what constitutes 'scale' on non conventional oil, in your mind, but I am fairly certain Canada will reach 5m b/d of Tar Sands oil, and Venezuela has equivalent capacity of its heavy oil *however* greater infrastructural challenges and political issues.

Whether Canada could get to 10 m b/d I don't know.

I would think, if oil was say, $120/bl, that 5-10m b/d of Coal-to-Oil and NGL would be quite likely.

In both cases, the GW consequences are pretty frightening. I believe the burning of a barrel of tar sands oil has, end-to-end, 3 times the CO2 emissions of a barrel of conventional oil.

Agree with your tack that coal is the primary GW issue (along with deforestation, non CO2 greenhouse gases, etc.).

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14 comments on Beginnings of UK “Oil Age”

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