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I like to follow all the threads on TOD, but I just can't keep up. Back in June there was a discussion of Coal and Climate Change by Dave Rutledge http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2697#more
What I got from that discussion was that 'global warming' won't happen because the world will run out of fossil fuels before CO2 level rises enough for any of the IPCC scenarios to happen. Have I missed any posting that points out serious errors on Prof. Rutledge's work? Why does global warming remain a concern to this community. Lots of people are very worried about GW, but we have been introduced to a far bigger concern. I think that none of Lomborg's arguments really address the 'Rutledge scenario'.
Well, part of the argument you refer to is based in the idea that there may not be enough fossil fuels to continue at the rates that some of the energy scenarios project. However, those IPCC scenarios may also fail because the leave out the possible last desperate gasp and grasp for the remaining fossil fuels of some really damaging short-term scenarios.
Cutting down forests for wood fuel has a carbon impact that compares with fossil fuels and the IPCC scenarios don't really take any of that into account. Trying to convert cellulose to alcohol or coal-to-liquids also may be a real problem.
In an energy short world, global warming could end up being the gift that keeps on giving.
Hi ST,
The IPCC scenarios do include changes in forest area, grasslands, cropland, and land for biofuels. You can get the spreadsheet at
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/data/allscen.xls
Dave
Jim Hansen himself has addressed this. Even with slightly generous estimates of remaining oil and gas reserves, the total level of global warming will be bad assuming we use them all up, but not catastrophic.
The really big problem is coal. We DO have enough of it to do tremendous damage (push natural geological/biological feedforwards into a big acceleration), and it looks like we are exactly on track to do so.
The back-to-the-future substitution of coal for depleting oil and gas will accelerate. That's worse even per joule/BTU of raw combustion energy because there's no hydrogen in coal, unlike oil and gas---all the energy comes from oxidization of carbon, resulting in greenhouse emissions.
And then there's the extra energy inefficiency of coal-to-liquids, coal-to-gas etc, requiring additional primary energy to get the useful end product to substitute for gas and oil.
There is hydrogen in coal, just not as much as in oil and NG.
I didn't know that. I assumed it was mostly just plain C.
What is the %age, or more relevantly, what is fraction of energy released which comes from hydrogen combustion in CH4 (presumably the maximum) typical gasoline or petroleum, and coal?
You'd have to make an unrealistic assumption about extractable coal reserves (plus shale to oil, tar sands etc.) to believe that we don't have enough fossil fuels to really wreck the Earth's climate.
We do. And then there's deforestation.
Peak coal is a neat idea, but there is a lot of coal out there, especially when you throw in the brown coal in places like Poland and the eastern states of Germany.
If we can blow the top off Kentucky mountains, then we can get at that coal.
Coal is almost entirely used for electrical generation, these days.
At least in the US, there's an easy substitution with wind, which is only a couple of cents per kwh more than coal (and cheaper, if you internalize all the external costs). Wind was 20% of new generation in 2006, and growing 40% per year. I think we could put a moratorium on all new coal plants, if we really wanted to. It might take a bit of demand management to handle peak demand periods, but it's pretty doable. In 10 years we could grow wind to the point that we started reducing coal useage.
I find that encouraging.
Even if warming maxes out at 3C I believe
Hansen says we will have a 'different kind of Earth'.
Big Coal is in denial about an early peak. When mechanical digging becomes prohibitive underground gasification will get the remainder. Right now they just can't dig it up fast enough.
I am far more concerned about climate change in the long run, though I think peak oil and gas may be worse crises in the short run. Looks to me like we have enough fossil fuels to get us to a 2C tipping point with the potential from there to have run-away positive feedbacks related to the loss of polar ice and methane emissions from soil. Very difficult to model where this would head because the science is weak on soil-vegetation dynamics and the speed of polar ice melt.
Lucky for us, the solution to both problems is the same.
1) Conserve. Cut our energy needs thus prolonging our supply of oil and coal. Cut our 'nasty' emissions by burning less fossil fuel.
A watt of power that we don't consume is one that we don't have to generate and "one watt" less pollution.
2) Get more 'green' energy on line. Same results, plus building for an oil-free future. Or at least for a future in which we use oil only when absolutely necessary.
So we build less efficient windmills, PV panels, wave generators than what we might be able to build 10, 20 years from now. Big F-ing deal. Right now we can build 'good enough to make a difference'. And that will give us some breathing space to make better devices down the road.
We can recycle those old mills and panels when the energy required to recycle is substantially less than that which would be created by the new mills/panels.
Time to fire up the plants and crank out some green goodies.
IMHO.
--
edit:
Let's throw another problem into the mix, along with global warming and 'peaking stuff': Health.
We're spending a lot of money because we're dumping so much 'nasty' into the air. We're hurting a lot of people. We're hurting a lot of growing things.
Getting more green power on line has (at least) a triple payoff.
Decreasing the power of certain oil producing nations and reversing some cash flow problems might be a couple more reasons....
The prospect of the arctic being ice-free within the next decade stuns me. It's another order of magnitude (sort of) rate of increase in the rate of increase.
There is this snippet from Kolbert's "Field Notes from a Catastrophe":
I'd never thought of it that way but had focused on "what is the right paradigm" and how important it might be to jump to it directly. The requirement for a radically changing series of adaptations pretty well shoots holes in all the lifeboats. Restructuring our entire resource base decade over decade just to keep up - not going to happen.
cfm in Gray, ME
"The prospect of the arctic being ice-free within the next decade stuns me"
Why? It's been free in the past. Even back as far as 1880 a ship made it ice free from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Also in 1944 a wooden RCMP boat on patrols made it through there ice free on several trips across the top.
It's not a problem.
Richard
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
You appear to be confused. We are not talking about the northwest passage, which are the trips to which you refer and which, by the way, were not completely ice free. No, we are talking about the entire arctic, all of it, every stinking square inch of ocean, being ice free. If you fail to understand the impact of that, then you need to refresh your understanding of the topic.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Here's what I wrote in another thread on this topic:
"I once looked at the numbers with a friend and to my surprise, Jeremy Legget did something similar (with slightly different numbers) in his speech on the conference.
Our result:
Gross Climate Limit: 4.90 GtCeq/y (IPCC for 2000-2100)
- Land use change: 1.60 GtCeq/y (IPCC for 2000-2100)
- Livestock GHG: 1.25 GtCeq/y (FAO, for 2004)
= Net Climate Limit for Energy: 2.05 GtCeq/y max.
I.e. Net Climate Limit for Energy for 2000-2100: 205 GtCeq
(GtCeq means gigatons of carbon equivalent. There are other units around, like CO2eq, so if you want to compare, be careful!)
If you compare this "climate limit" of 2.05 GtCeq with the various reserve estimates, you find that even with the most conservative fossil fuel reserve estimates, we can just afford to burn all the oil and gas that's there but only if we do not burn a single gram of coal at the same time.
So, as many speaker said during the conference: Peak Oil will not save us from Global Warming, especially not if CTL and tar sands will be used as large-scale substitutes.
Cheers,
Davidyson
Reference to the FAO report:
http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf
"
In addition to COAL....
There are lots of other sources of CO2.
Last week's Drumbeats had stories about CO2 emissions from clear-cutting jungles and bogs to grow palm-oil in Indonesia and Malaysia. The smoke is bad, but as the water table in the bogs falls, they release massive quantities of CO2 - as much in 2005 as nearly one third of the entire US CO2 output!
There are also other GHGs.
Leanan also had stories in the Drumbeat about NO2 from fertilizers, which is 2x more greenhouse intensive than CO2. Enough is sprayed on corn and soybeans for ethanol or biodiesel to make "bio-fuels" a NET greenhouse contributor.
There are worries about thawing permafrost methane and ocean-based methane (clathrates?). There are lots of industrial solvents that are much more potent than C02.