<Social Norms, Climate Change, and the Energy Crisis We Face The Oil Drum DrumBeat: October 1, 2007>

99 comments on A few reviews of Lomborg's "Cool It"

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Davidyson on October 1, 2007 - 3:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

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
"

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EthanS on October 1, 2007 - 1:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

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.

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99 comments on A few reviews of Lomborg's "Cool It"

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