67 comments on ASPO-USA Sacramento - a Comment
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While I believe in AGW, I lament the fact that scientists have become political activists. When that happens, you get bad science. Inquiries regarding PO at realclimate.org are met with a blanket "we use USGS figures. There is a enough coal for centuries", even though James Hansen has co-authored papers on more realistic emission scenarios. Recognising the limit of FF reserves should be part of seeking the truth, but risks watering down the "message" on GW. I think AGW still remains a severe threat even with limited FF, so this should not be the case.
I sense that after being ignored and downgraded for many years, (e.g. researchers applications being vetted for views on abortion), scientists are keen to make a stand on what is an important issue. However, as PO becomes a real issue during this century, the public will ask why scientists did not warn about such a vital issue. The public will think, why should we ever to listen to scientists again.
As a conference attendee I found the dismissal of Climate change and an immediate issue to be very frustrating. The IPCC is an intergovernmental organization that produces political scientific documents (kind of like the EIA) and has been criticized as bowing to political pressure
to downplay the more serious scenarios of climate change. While Udall quoted some researchers who were dismissive of PO that is by no means typical. James Hanson, for example, has been quoted her on TOD as saying estimates of future fossil fuel production are inaccurate. Moreover, Hanson and others have pointed out that a reduction in fossil fuel use that will attend a decrease in supply are likely to exacerbate warming as the cooling effect of aerosols will be diminished.
New research into Anthropogenic climate change has identified several tipping points that could lead to rapid, and catastrophic changes in climate. Much of this new research can be found in concise form in Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence. I would recommend that those who dismiss Climate Change as a non-immediate problem check it out.
I am continually amazed at the tunnel vision involved on both sides. We heard many speakers call out the EIA for the fact that they have downplayed PO for political reasons. Yet those same folks embrace the IPCC’s “its serious but not that serious” position on climate change. Rapid changes in the earth’s climate will be catastrophic. For example, Randy Udall dismissal of water shortages and population ignores the effect that a loss of glacial storage will have on Asian populations or what effect a decreased snow pack will have on the American West. Far from being courageous, those who feel that we must ignore one problem to address another are simply myopic.
At the risk of stirring a little controversy, the debates and discussions on Climate Change and Peak Oil do not occur in an isolated environment. By which I mean that the public are aware through personal observation of the impacts of both. If the current impact of Climate Change has only been, for most of the United States, that the winters have got a little warmer, and that the temperatures have yet to surpass those of the 1930's, then it is hard for the public to be concerned.
If at the same time the price of gas has multiplied over four times in the last couple of years, driven in part by a diminishing gap between supply and demand at a reasonable price, then it rapidly becomes more evident to the public which is the more immediate problem.
Unfortunately, I suspect for the nations energy security, the issue of Climate Change (have you noticed that since the globe has, at least temporarily apparently stopped warming - except in the Northern Latitudes - the phraseology has changed) has seized the politicians attention. The problem that this raises is that, in accepting Hansen's maxim that "coal is the enemy of mankind", they put needed power stations on hold, or cancel them. Thus, since there is a lead time in construction, if and when that power will be required (even railroads need power from somewhere, as do electric cars) it may not be there since the scale of renewable and sustainable energy growth within the needed time scale is not going to be sufficient.
This is not to say that certain parts of the world are not seeing severe impacts from Climate Change - the droughts in Australia being one example, and if the patterns of the last warming period are followed, the droughts in California and in the South East may be sustained for decades, rather it is to suggest that the price of heating oil this winter, and whether there will be enough natural gas to go around are more immediate problems that the public can relate to. But even there getting an accelerated solution to the problem is proving to be quite difficult.
Climate scientists have used the term "Climate Change" since the 80s as they knew, even then, that it was not just a question of warming. The popular media has preferred Global Warming. My Master Thesis in 1991 was "Promethean Legacy: Global Climate Change and U.S. Energy Policy."
My point is that people express frustration with overly optimistic scenarios regarding PO tend to discount climate change effects because they are only looking at overly optimistic scenarios.
I think the best way I have seen how to combine climate & peak oil has been done by Rob Hopkins from transition towns movement:
http://transitionculture.org/
From the Transition Handbook:
"The Transition Timeline is a tool for the Transition communities starting to grapple with preparing their local Energy Descent Plans. The first version is nearing completion, and should be made available next month, and it is intended as an ongoing interactive project.
It lays out the global context of peak oil and climate change in some detail and then considers the Transition Vision of how the UK could develop over the next 20 years within that context, looking at the key areas which local subgroups have tended to form around, such as food, transport, electricity generation, health and so forth."
Homer- Dixon's The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization is another great source. Homer-Dixon sees 5 interlocking stressors: peak oil, climate change, environmental destruction, population and economic inequality.
Peak Oil and Climate Change must be addressed together, comprehensively. And yes, Homer-Dixon extends that argument very persuasively. Personally, I use "resource depletion, toxic planet, climate change, cancerous growth and economic inequality" as the five stressors. I was at a Transition Town workshop this weekend and I hammered on economic inequality and class as something largely left out of the Transition Initiative. It's critical because that is the basis of legitimacy, social contract and any decisionmaking process. Transition Towns is very middle class; that's important in that what's left of middle class has to get angry, but it's not enough to have only middle class participation.
All of these stressors have to be reconciled together if we are to have a "positive" outcome.
cfm in Gray, ME
Actually, the IPCC is 100% right about that. Where I differ with the IPCC and climate change activists is that I consider the CC situation to be beyond any political fix. I agree with Lovelock, the climate is way past the tipping point. The numbers:
We have measured 70 ppm increase in 50 years. Assume that use of fossil fuels is at peak now, and will rapidly decline mirroring the growth over the past 50 years. (Wrong, because natural gas and coal use is still increasing) Assume no positive feedbacks from the environment (Arctic peat does not decay, the Amazon does not burn). Disregard the several decade time delay between atmospheric chemistry changes and climate changes. You still end up at 455 ppm by 2058. The CO2 persists for hundreds of years at least.
The last time that CO2 was above 450 ppm was the Eocene. Antarctica was ice free at that time. The seas were 70 meters higher. It could take centuries for all the ice to melt, but that is the destination.
How you feel about this depends on where you live. If you have farm land in Iceland at 100 meters elevation, you would not be troubled. My perspective living in the South Pacific is a bit different.
Some of the islands are getting flooded out already. For people living on atolls, where their ancestors have lived for 3000 years, it is already the end of their world. I was also in the Caribbean recently. One of the most shocking unreported stories is that almost all the shallow water coral in the Caribbean died in 2005 due to high sea surface temperatures. It is not recovering. The great barrier reef coral, already suffering dieoffs, will probably all be dead within 30 years. These disasters have already happened or are in progress, while the sacred mass consumers are still enjoying this year's new record global liquids production.
The idea that running out of fossil fuels will prevent catastrophic climate change is wrong, wrong, wrong. Maybe if oil had peaked in 1958, it would have helped. Maybe we would have a world population of 2 billion with a nuclear electric economy by now. But that didn't happen. If anything, fuel switching like coal to liquids projects will accelerate and exacerbate climate change. The climate change people are correct to be indifferent to PO, except concerning how it encourages greater global coal and natural gas use.
Obviously, PO is going to trigger all sorts of chaos in the economy and food production. Cherfurka predicts that world population could decline by 5 or 6 billion by 2100 due to PO. But that would be necessary anyway. The carrying capacity of the Eocene climate world will be much lower than at present. Even if someone invents tabletop fuson, the dieoff is going to happen anyway.
You seem to have not been attentive to the material published here at TOD on the issue. I recomend these posts:
Implications of "Peak Oil" for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate
The Coal Question and Climate Change
It's still possible that we have passed the tipping points or that the additional carbon we are still going to add to the atmosphere will have us pass the tipping points.
The conclusions drawn in both of those articles are based on the thinking available at the time, and, as MicroHydro points out, things are much worse than the IPCC reported, in my view.
Climate change may be another problem that gets away from us, to borrow a term from Dr. Hirsch.
You need to check a geologic record of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are at 380 ppm, not 3800 ppm.
Over the epochs going back to the Pre-Cambrian, Carbon Dioxide has been locked away by the planet in the form of Carbonates, Organic rich muds, coal, oil, and gas.
Fortunately for the planet, a group of apes came along and mined and burned the captive carbon.
Thus restoring the balance.
Gaia theory works:-).
But if apes continue doing so dinosaurs will return and wipe them away.