 | Efficiency Policy, Jevon’s Paradox, and the “Shadow†Rebound Effect | The Oil Drum | GHAWAR: an estimate of remaining oil reserves and production decline (Part 2 - results) |  |
290 comments on DrumBeat: April 27, 2007
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290 comments on DrumBeat: April 27, 2007
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d_d, great sentiment. TOD is like a party/gathering, it sometimes gets "out of hand", and the "Peak Oil" featured guest doesn't seem to arrive, but I also enjoy slinging ideas around. My current opinion is that the technology to solve the PO problem is currently ramping up, but there's going to be a nasty pot-hole before we are saved. Anyhow, my sentiments exactly re TOD.
No attack here but reading the comments section night after night, one is struck by notion of most posters that Peak Oil is a bad thing because it will reduce our abilty to burn more oil. After reading the link "Gaia's Fever", below, one realises that all of humanity's efforts should be directed at returning the carbon that has already been burned BACK into the soil and that somehow the burning of all fossil fuels, particularily oil, should CEASE IMMEDIATELY. Failure to do so PROMISES a return to the climatic conditions that forced oil formation originally. Climatic condtions that should properly be known henceforth as GLOBAL HEATING. Lovelock is not off the mark with his dire warnings and prediction of lifeless, superheated deserts throughout the mid lattitudes and stagnant, uniformly warm oceans because THEY HAVE OCCURRED IN THE PAST, making a "Post Peak die-off" pale by comparison.
Understanding this gives humans a new or maybe our only, purpose on Earth, namely HELPING THE EARTH MAINTAIN A TEMPERATURE THAT ALLOWS LIFE TO CONTINUE, because "what we call “fossil fuels” were never meant to be a gift for us."
http://www.aspoitalia.net/aspoenglish/documents/bardi/gaia.html
Putting the carbon back....
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/
In the past, the global temperature has been 20 degrees warmer and 12 degrees colder. Both of these are natural states of the Earth - and life continued.
The Earth is currently bumping along in an Ice Age, with both temperature and CO2 levels at all time lows. Indeed, the low level of CO2 contributes to our current Ice Age.
We are currently in a brief warm spell (interglacial), but shortly the temperature will drop 12 degrees and we'll be back into a glacial period. It is pretty unlikely we will break out of the Ice Age, there just isn't enough stuff to burn. Release of large methane deposits could put off glaciations by a few thousands years, but in the long term, human activity will cause only a minor blip in the geological record.
If humans get that much time then I wouldn't bet against us. Maybe in "a few thousand years" we'd actually be able to retrieve hydrogen/hydrocarbons from Jupiter or wherever, burn them, and spit the excess carbon out into space.
Interesting! With todays level of CO2 what it is and us "bumping along in an Ice Age" you just stood all of science and observable data on its head.
"As of January 2007, the earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 0.0383% by volume (383 ppmv) or 0.0582% by weight. This represents about 2.996×1012 tonnes, and is estimated to be 105 ppm (37.77%) above the pre-industrial average.
The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800,000 years before the present. During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied between 180 – 210 µL/L during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 µL/L during warmer interglacials."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Did you actually read your link???
800,000 years ago is still well inside the current Ice Age, which started some 50 million years ago. That is still a small fraction of the Earth's 4,500 million year history. For the vast majority of that time, the temperature has been much warmer and CO2 levels higher. If anything, the current state of the Earth is abnormal.
Best hopes for improved reading comprehension.
Did you read the link I first posted?
"These Gaia’s fevers have happened several times in the past and have been disastrous for the biosphere. At the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, a gigantic volcanic eruption took place in the area which is today Siberia, releasing great amounts of CO2. It may be that it also heated directly the hydrate reservoirs, releasing great amounts of methane. The resulting runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet to a hothouse and almost killed the biosphere. According to some estimates, only 5% of the species existing at that time survived. That was called, correctly, “the mother of all extinctions”. "
Best hopes for actually reading links you reply to.
So there you have it, despite an extreme catastrophic event, life continued. Life is pretty resilient. Catastrophic events will certainly happen again in the Earth's future - supervolcanoes, asteroid strikes etc, will happen. It may be considered an obligation of mankind to restrain his impact on the planet, but far worse events will befall the Earth regardless.
But perhaps you are being disingenuous, and like Alan, are not really concerned about maintaining life on Earth but specifically maintaining human civilization on Earth (a standard bait-and-switch tactic often employed in these debates), and the selected useful livestock or cute furry animals (no-one cares much about the ugly or troublesome ones).
As you have shown, it would be futile for us to attempt to maintain the current temperature within a few degrees as natural variation far exceeds this, which we have no control over. If human civilisation is unable to cope with it's self-induced warming of a few degrees, how is it to cope with temperature variations of plus or minus 10 degrees, which are certain to occur in the future?
Many people argue that the real problem is human overpopulation, even if we reduce Co2 emissions, the burden of 6.5 billion people aspiring to an affluent Western lifestyle is likely to screw up the planet as surely as anything.
The IPCC business as usual scenarios are based on projections of hydrocarbon use that we know are simply impossible. We will soon run out of stuff to burn. We may hold off the next glaciation for a bit (see Ruddiman), but in 50,000 years time, anthro-CO2 will have disappeared from the atmosphere, and Mother Earth will resume her regular course of glaciations. Ice caps will expand, subarctic continents will again be covered in 2km thick ice sheets, and life on land will be forced into temperate equatorial zone. The glacial period may last around 120,000 years. In this case, it would be interesting to see what becomes of human civilisation.
I find science fascinating, it is a pity some people try to turn it into pseudo-religion or anthropocentric dogma.
"life continued"
5%? The argument for divine intervention IMO has a better percentage of being involved with bringing the biosphere back from near oblivion than pure happenstance.
"It may be considered an obligation of mankind to restrain his impact on the planet, but far worse events will befall the Earth regardless."
Well I don't have to imagine an unobliging mankind gleefully returning a great majority of the carbon to the atmosphere. The same carbon that took the Earth many millions of years to squirrel away. All that CO2, back in the atmosphere, at once! Sounds pretty catastrophic by any stretch. In fact I see it happening NOW.
"But perhaps you are being disingenuous, and like Alan, are not really concerned about maintaining life on Earth but specifically maintaining human civilization on Earth (a standard bait-and-switch tactic often employed in these debates), and the selected useful livestock or cute furry animals (no-one cares much about the ugly or troublesome ones)."
It's like you're in my head!
"As you have shown, it would be futile for us to attempt to maintain the current temperature within a few degrees as natural variation far exceeds this, which we have no control over."
I have shown no such thing and instead argue the opposite. As Earths only sentient beings(apparently) we HAVE it in our control to push or not push the Earth into runaway global heating.
"We will soon run out of stuff to burn. We may hold off the next glaciation for a bit (see Ruddiman), but in 50,000 years time, anthro-CO2 will have disappeared from the atmosphere, and Mother Earth will resume her regular course of glaciations."
No one knows what percentage of CO2 need be present to kill the biosphere and make runaway global heating permanent. There may have been greater percentages of atmospheric CO2 present in the far distant past but solar output was much less as well. One thing is for certain however, we're heading in the direction where we may find out. Remember, all that carbon, back again, now!
"I find science fascinating, it is a pity some people try to turn it into pseudo-religion or anthropocentric dogma."
No pity at all since science cannot stand on its own. Science and religion are only a few of the things we clever, resourceful, resilient humans have INVENTED to help us understand ourselves, the Earth and our place in the universe.
Well, since homo sapians evolved (and basically all primates; 50 million is about back to the first primate from memory) under "abnormal" conditions; we should do our VERY best to avoid creating "normal" conditions.
Under your definition of "normal"; grasses are not normal, since they evolved recently as well.
The POV of looking at the earth from the perspective of billions of years has no validity for human beings. So your "normal" is utterly without meaning for us.
Best Hopes for human centered problem solving,
Alan
"Best Hopes for human centered problem solving,"
It's funny how this debate swings from "save the planet!" to "never mind the planet, save the humans", in the space of a few posts.
Well,yeh, now that you have stipulated that maintaining the human species is not important and that wiping out 95% of all species is no big deal either, I can understand why you wouldn't be concerned with global warming or much of anything else for that matter. But I think the debate generally springs from the consensus view that human beings matter and most of the existing species of other animals matters also. Now that we understand that you are operating from a radically different premise, there is not much sense in carrying on this debate with you.
Please review your geology and anthropology. The current alternating regime of ice ages and warm ages did not begin 50 million years ago. Try a bit over 3 million years ago. The period from 65 million years ago to about 3 million years ago was considerably warmer than today with higher CO2 levels. The period since the ice age cycles began has had considerably lower CO2 levels. This is the environment in which homo sapiens has evolved and to which we are acclimated. A significant change in this environment might lead to unpredictable results. Antarctica formed an ice cap a bit over 40 million years ago, changing the climate somewhat but the real ice age regime did not start til shortly after the central American isthmus rose from the sea changing the thermohaline circulation in earnest.
For instance, climate researchers in the Carolinas tested a large area by enclosing it in plastic wrapping and deliberately pumping in higher concentrations of CO2. Poison ivy responded strangely, not only growing more prolifically but producing a new and different toxin than that to which we were accustomed. Other plants failed to respond at all to higher CO2 concentrations.
The main point is that we have 7 billion lives dependent on today's climate. Rushing to alter that climate (either warmer or colder) when we do not have a good handle on what it might cause is foolish.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
"The main point is that we have 7 billion lives dependent on today's climate. Rushing to alter that climate (either warmer or colder) when we do not have a good handle on what it might cause is foolish."
Agreed. We sure did rush to release all that CO2 during the last 150 yrs or so. Now lets bring it back to pre-industrial levels, 260–270 ppmv, just to be sure.
Spaceman,
I wasn't trying to imply that humans actually know the answer now, just that if we actually have "a few thousand more years" that we'd figure it out -- e.g. when importing fuels from outer space whether to eject the carbon or not. I'm assuming that "Science" would get it right well short of thousands of years (look how far we've come in the last thousand).
Actually I was replying to the poster BobCousins.
With all the holes our present "advanced technological society" has it seems doubtful we could even make it back to the Moon! But following your thought and we figure a way to make it through this mess and expand into the solar system, Mars sure could use some extra CO2 if'n we want to live there someday. ;-)