Global peak oil consumption could impact climate
In: Energy & Environment, Global Warming Wednesday Sep 24,2008
We all know that fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas rise the percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But most of all don’t know by how much. Well, the burning of fossil fuels are accounted for 80 percent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era.
To anticipate emissions from the burning fuel and to estimate how it will impact the climate can be done if we know how and when global oil production will peak. But scientists and analysts have debated over this problem in the past years and were unable to come up with a precise answer. But Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have considered a wide range of fossil fuel consumption scenarios. Published Aug. 5 in the American Geophysical Union’s Global Biogeochemical Cycles, their research showed that the increasing percentage of carbon dioxide can be kept under a safety line as long as emmissions from coal are evenly dispersed globally.
“This is the first paper in the scientific literature that explicitly melds the two vital issues of global peak oil production and human-induced climate change,” Kharecha said. “We’re illustrating the types of action needed to get to target carbon dioxide levels.”
But why is it bad to have to much carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere ? It’s bad because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases effectively absorb thermal infrared radiation, emitted by the Earth’s surface, by the atmosphere itself due to the same gases, and by clouds. Atmospheric radiation is emitted to all sides, including downward to the Earth’s surface. Thus greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system. It is believed that global warming will become dangerous if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeds a concentration of approximately 450 parts per million. That’s a 61 percent increase from the pre-industrial era but just 17 percent more than the actual level of 385 parts per million.
An important source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the volcanoes. However, emissions of CO2 by human activities (mostly deforestation and the burning of fossil fuel) are currently more than 130 times greater than the quantity emitted by volcanoes, amounting to about 27 billion tonnes per year.
Kharecha and Hansen came up with 5 different carbon dioxide scenarios, each scenario reflecting different estimates for the global production peak of fossil fuels, the timing of which depends on reserve size, recoverability and technology.
The first scenario estimated carbon dioxide levels if emissions from fossil fuels are unconstrained and follow along “business as usual,” growing by two percent annually until half of each reservoir has been recovered, after which emissions begin to decline by two percent annually. The remaining forth considered the previous mentioned dispersing of coal, reduction of coal consumption and/or improvements in coal burning technologies.
The unconstrained “business as usual” scenario resulted in a level of atmospheric carbon dioxide that more than doubled the pre-industrial level and from about 2035 onward levels exceed the 450 parts per million threshold of this study. Even when low-end estimates of reserves were assumed, the threshold was exceeded from about 2050 onwards. However, the other four scenarios resulted in carbon dioxide levels that peaked in various years but all fell below the prescribed cap of 450 parts per million by about 2080 at the latest, with levels in two of the scenarios always staying below the threshold.
“Because coal is much more plentiful than oil and gas, reducing coal emissions is absolutely essential to avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change brought about by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeding 450 parts per million,” Kharecha said. “The most important mitigation strategy we recommend – a phase-out of carbon dioxide emissions from coal within the next few decades – is feasible using current or near-term technologies.”
- Tags: carbon dioxide, climate, coal, fossil fuel, Global Warming, oil
Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.
September 24th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Peak Oil will end the burning of coal when the economy collapses.
According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from “outside,” and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
Christopher Squire
September 26th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
James Hansen in his own words [Nature Sep 05 2008]:
This week, James Hansen was in London, UK, to testify on behalf of activists who defaced a coal-fired power station in Kent. Geoff Brumfiel caught up with Hansen at a London hotel to find out what has got him all hot and bothered.
• Why did you come to testify?
Nothing could be more central to the problem we face with global climate change. If you look at the size of the oil, gas and coal reservoirs you’ll see that the oil and gas have enough CO2 to bring us up to a dangerous level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
There’s a potential to solve that problem if we phase out coal. If we were to have a moratorium on coal-fired power plants within the next few years, and then phase out the existing ones between 2010 and 2030, then CO2 would peak at something between 400 and 425 parts per million. That leaves a difficult problem, but one that you can solve.
• Do you think that leaders like UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown have lived up to their promises on climate change?
It depends on whether they will have a moratorium on coal-fired power. I think that the greenest leaders, like German chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Brown, are saying the right words. But if you look at their actions, emissions are continuing to increase. All of these countries and the United States are planning to build more coal-fired power plants. And if you build more coal-fired power plants, then it is not possible to achieve the goals that they say they are committed to. It’s a really simple argument and yet they won’t face up to it.
• So do you think that these activists were justified in doing what they did?
The activists drawing attention to the issue seems to me as justified. You should try to do things through the democratic process, but we really are getting to an emergency situation. We can’t continue to build more coal-fired power plants that do not capture CO2 if we hope to solve the problem.
• We need to get energy from somewhere. So if we’re not getting it from coal, then where?
The first thing we should do is focus on energy efficiency. The fact that utilities make more money by selling more energy is a big problem. We have to change those rules. Then there is renewable energy — in order to be able to fully exploit renewable energy, we need better electric grids. So those should be the first things, but I think that we also need to look at next-generation nuclear power.
• Some have said you are hypocritical for flying all the way from the US to the UK just to testify. How do you respond?
I like to travel as little as possible, not only because it uses less CO2 but because I prefer to do science. But sometimes there are things which are sufficiently important that I think it makes sense.
• What do you think the role of the scientist should be in the broader societal debate on climate change?
I think it would be irresponsible not to speak out. There is a clear gap between what is understood by the relevant scientific community and what is known by the public, and we have to try and close that gap. If we don’t do something in the very near future, we’re going to create a situation for our children and grandchildren that is out of control.