Fire or Ice? The role of peak fossil fuels in climate change scenarios
Posted by Ugo Bardi on March 9, 2009 - 9:59am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Carbon dioxide emission scenarios according to IPCC (from http://www.globalwarmingart.com). "Peaking" of the major fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal, could radically change these projections.
Some early papers raised the question of the discrepancy of the standard IPCC scenarions and the peak oil projections. The first one was probably Jean Laherrere with a paper published in 2001. Later on Anders Sivertsson , Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell wrote in 2003 in "The New Scientist" a paper titled "Not enough oil for climate change". They criticized the IPCC scenarios for being overoptimistic in terms of oil and gas reserves. These early papers didn't attempt to calculate the future concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Perhaps the earliest attempt to quantify the effects of CO2 on climate while taking depletion into account was the work by Pushker Kharecha and Jim Hansen who produced a paper titled "Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate". This study was published in 2008 but became available on line as a working paper in April 2007. In the first version of the paper, Kharecha and Hansen start from the premise that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere should not be allowed to exceed 450 ppm; later on they arrived to the conclusion that the dangerous limit is more likely to be around 350 ppm. So, they examine several scenarios that involve policy measures to force the reduction of emissions. They find that, if no such measures are taken, CO2 concentrations might rise to near 600 ppm by the end of the century, mainly as the result of coal combustion. Oil and gas would peak before 2030 in most of the scenarios considered and would give only a minor contribution to the total of the emissions.
Shortly after the paper by Kharecha and Hansen, David Rutledge published a post on "The Oil Drum" website with the title "The coal question and climate change" (June 2007). Later on, in December 2008, Rutledge also presented his results as an invited talk at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Society. Rutledge set up an approach that would be used again by other authors; that is, he started with an estimate of the available resources, from that he generated a production curve that involves "peaking" and then he calculated CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Then, by means of the software package named "MAGICC," available from NCAR, Rutledge generates climate scenarios in terms of CO2 concentrations and atmospheric temperatures. The results are that geological constraints on coal production (what he calls "producer limited" profile) would limit CO2 concentrations to about 480 ppm even without policy measures to curb emissions. Under these conditions, temperatures might rise of approximately 1.6 deg. C. Rutledge concludes that "if we wish to reduce the temperature rise, we must bury the CO2 (assuming that it will not leak out for 1,000 years), or establish preserves for fossil fuels that prevent them from being produced."
Robert Brecha examined the question in his 2008 paper "Emission scenarios in the face of fossil-fuel peaking" . His approach is very similar to that of Rutledge. Brecha calculates a series of scenarios in terms of fossil fuel production - including oil, gas and coal - on the basis of reserve estimates and logistic production curves. No policy interventions are assumed. Subsequently, he estimates CO2 concentrations and atmospheric temperatures using the MAGICC software package. His conclusions are that the world energy production could peak from 2030 to 2050, depending on assumptions, causing CO2 emissions to peak as well. The CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere would continue to grow after the energy peak, but it would be slowly absorbed by the effect of the natural "sinks" of the ecosphere. By the end of the century, CO2 concentrations would stabilize in a range from ca. 480 to 580 ppm and temperatures could rise by 1-3 deg C. Brecha's results indicate - again - that geology, alone, may not be sufficient to stop anthropogenic global warming from reaching dangerous levels.
Luis De Sousa and Euan Mearns (2008) took an approach similar to the papers by Brecha and Rutledge, but arrived at somewhat different conclusions in terms of policy recommendations. For estimating emissions, they use a model that they developed earlier and that they term "Olduvai Revisited" (2008). The model is based on resource estimates and forecasts which assume "bell shaped" behavior of the production curves. They find a global peak for fossil fuel production by 2018. Using the MAGICC software package, they find that, for this scenario, CO2 concentrations should not rise over 450-500 ppm and that temperatures should not rise over 1 deg. C. De Sousa and Mearns conclude that fossil fuel decline will keep CO2 concentrations below levels that are or were considered dangerous by climate experts and that there is no need to burden the OECD and non-OECD countries with artificial measures to mitigate emissions to achieve this end.
The latest entry on this subject published in a scientific journal is a paper by Willem Nel and Christopher Cooper which appeared in "Energy Policy" (2009) with the title "Implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming". The paper is very detailed and comprehensive in its estimates of fossil fuel reserves; it also includes estimates on the contribution of renewables, nuclear and unconventional fuels. The authors generate production scenarios based on logistic curves. CO2 concentrations and atmospheric temperatures are calculated by a detailed modeling approach. In what they call the Energy Reference Case, Nel and Cooper find a peak in the total world primary energy production that should take place around 2025. According to the authors' model, the peak will not slow the growth of the gross world product. It will keep growing for a couple of decades longer, peaking only around 2050. CO2 emissions are expected to peak with primary energy, that is around 2025. The calculated maximum CO2 concentrations don't exceed 500 ppm, except for the most pessimistic scenario, in which 550 ppm are reached. From these concentrations, Nel and Cooper calculate that the temperature increase prior to 2100 should not exceed 1°C. They conclude that this increase in temperature is not dangerous and that reaching these CO2 levels is preferable to facing the economic and social consequences of not fully exploiting the remaining fossil fuels.
The study by Nel and Cooper has been challenged by Antonio Zecca and Luca Chiari (2009) in a working paper to be submitted to a scientific journal. Zecca and Chiari criticize the conclusions of the paper regarding CO2 concentrations and temperature effects. First, they argue that CO2 future concentrations are underestimated because the lifetimes of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere may be longer than assumed in the paper. Furthermore, Nel and Cooper may have underestimated the climate sensitivity due to forcing and other factors in their calculations. According to Zecca and Chiari, even for the "Energy Reference Case" scenario presented in the paper, the final temperature increase of the atmosphere may be of the order of 1.7 °C. They also stress that there is no reasonable guarantee that fossil resources that are now too expensive or difficult to extract won't be used, as Nel and Cooper assume. Therefore Zecca and Chiari consider the conclusions by Nel and Cooper to be much too optimistic in terms of the opportunity to continue to burn hydrocarbons.
Finally, let me report on what is perhaps the most recent entry in this field, the work by Dolores Garcia (2009) which was presented at the "Mission Earth" seminar held in Zurich in 2009. Garcia's model is a modified version of the "World3" model that was developed for the study "The Limits to Growth" published in 1972. It links together several parameters: energy, greenhouse gases, population, GDP and others. It is a truly integrated model, an approach more advanced than that of the other models described here. Nevertheless, Garcia's results are consistent with those of the other papers, with carbon dioxide production peaking around 2020. Garcia doesn't attempt to calculate temperatures, but the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is calculated using an approximate estimation of the effect of sinks. It stabilizes at 510 ppm by the end of the century.
The studies published so far that take into account both peak oil and climate change are a truly minuscule number in comparison to the total number of papers that deal with climate change. This says a lot on how the problem was neglected so far. Nevertheless, a consensus seems to be emerging. Even with different models and different assumptions, it appears that geological constraints pose an important limit on CO2 emissions. All the studies discussed here arrive at the conclusion that, even without policy interventions, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will stabilize in a range that goes, approximately, from 450 to 600 ppm. These values are far below those of the "business as usual" (bau) scenario of the IPCC that predicts a CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm by the end of the century.
Based on these studies, peak oil (and, in general, peak fossils) is going to have a strong effect on the climate issue. For one thing, it may well make the Kyoto treaty obsolete. There would be no need for policy measures to enforce the Kyoto targets. The emission limits that today are often seen as an insufferable set of constraints on the economy, could become, in the near future, just a consequence of the reduced supply of fossil fuels coupled with a contracting economy. On the other hand, the targets of the Kyoto treaty might well turn out to be insufficient to counter global warming.
At this point, there is no consensus among the authors in terms of policy recommendations relating to these results. Some of the authors cited here conclude that peaking of fossil fuel production will be sufficient to maintain CO2 at a level below that considered dangerous by many climate experts. But this conclusion is not shared by other authors who maintain, instead, that even if we could be sure that CO2 concentrations would remain in the 450-550 ppm range, we would still face dangerous levels of global warming. Clearly, this is a difficult issue to solve, given the uncertainty in the scenarios and in the calculations of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the temperature effects. Furthermore, there are several phenomena that the climate models don't consider and that could make warming much more serious than currently believed. Among these, the saturation of the CO2 sinks, the positive feedback of the methane hydrates and those of the ice/albedo system. We just don't know enough to be able to say whether depletion is enough to "save" us from global warming.
However, it may not matter which threat one considers the most immediate: there exist measures that will mitigate both global warming and depletion. These are energy efficiency and replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy or renewables. There is only one mitigation measure that doesn't cut both ways: CO2 geological sequestration. If depletion is a more immediate problem than global warming, clearly it would make no sense to waste precious resources in removing CO2 from the atmosphere. On the other hand, if oil and gas depletion leads us to rely more on coal, then sequestration might be necessary.
In my opinion, the studies I have discussed show that there are serious threats looming ahead. I believe that whether the threat be depletion or warming, we should move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible. Still, it is not at all certain that what we can do will be enough and we might well suffer for both effects: lack of fuels and global warming. It wouldn't be "fire or ice", but fire and ice.
I would like to thank Antonio Zecca for his comments and suggestions. This paper was modified after publication with some minor corrections and the addition of one bibliographic reference.
References
Aleklett, K., Sivertsson, A., Campbell, C. "Not enough oil for climate change", The New Scientist print edition, 2 August 2003. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4216Brecha, R. J., 2008, "Emission scenarios in the face of fossil-fuel peaking" Energy Policy, Volume 36, Issue 9, Pages 3492-3504. Available at http://campus.udayton.edu/~physics/rjb/Articles/Emissions%20scenarios%20and%20fossil-fuel%20peaking%20-%20final.pdf
De Sousa, L. and Mearns E., 2008 "Fossil fuel ultimates and CO2 emission scenarios. "The Oil Drum, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4807
De Sousa, L. and Mearns E., 2008 "Olduvai Revisited", The Oil Drum, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3565
Garcia, D., 2009 "A new world model including energy and climate change data", Proceedings of the "Mission Earth" seminar, ETH, Zurich, 2009 (http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/fcellier/AGS/AGSME_2009.html (also submitted for publication on www.theoildrum.com)
Kharecha P. and Hansen J., 2008, Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate" Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB3012 (2008). See also http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2559 for an earlier version
Laherrère J.H. 2001 “Estimates of Oil Reserves ” IIASA International Energy Workshop June 19-21 2001 Laxenburg http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/ECS/IEW2001/pdffiles/Papers/Laherrere-long.pdf
Nel W. P. and C. J. Cooper, "Implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming", Energy Policy 37, 166 (2009). Available at http://sites.google.com/site/willem764downloads/
Rutledge, D. , 2007. "The coal question and climate change" http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2697
Rutledge, D., 2008 "Hubbert's peak, the coal question and climate change", proceedings of the fall meeting ot the American Geophysical Union, http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/AGU%20abstract.pdf
Zecca A. and Chiari, L. 2009 "Peak oil will not save us from global warming". Working paper available at http://www.science.unitn.it/~zecca/wiki/uploads/Site/Oil_vs_warming.pdf
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Ugo, thanks for a nice overview.
Whilst I agree with this in part, I think it is incomplete. I will do a short post next week showing how coal fired combined heat and power district heating systems deliver 3* as much energy to society as coal fired power fitted with carbon capture. Improving energy efficiency is the way to go IMO - this extends the life of FF energy reserves whilst delivering sharply reduced CO2 emissions and lower energy prices in the near term.
The mindset that wants to deliver lower CO2 emissions has also given us bio-fuels and the fantastic notion of the hydrogen economy. IMO, the mantra of energy efficiency is the only route to go, delivering both greater energy security and reduced CO2 emissions in the near term. The focus on CO2 has led us to many energy intensive policies that are poorly suited to our energy declining future.
I believe you once said that "energy efficiency is the shortest route to Hell" - but that I beleive is coming from a rather different philosophical stand point - that would be fun to debate.
Euan, the sentence "energy efficiency is the straightest path to Hell" is not mine, it was said by James Kunstler, but I wholeheartedly agree with the concept. It is, indeed, a different philosophical standpoint which has to do with things such as the Jevons effect. I believe that most measures based on efficiency are ineffecitve. You can't believe how many politicians here in Italy conclude their speeches saying that such and such measure that they took resulted in so many tons of fuel saved and so many tons of CO2 not emitted. How can they say it? If you are more efficient, someone else will have more fuel available and that someone else will use it. For this reason, personally I have a drastic attitude: the only way to solve the crisis (be it climatic or geological - as you like) is to move as fast as possible to renewables (or maybe nuclear). That, as I say in the paper, cuts both ways.
Ugo, it looks like we have 3 choices:
1. Carry on as now and waste vast amounts of energy
2. Implement all energy efficiency measures available to us - keep this party going as long as possible
3. (2) + a system of energy rationing to counter Jevons
I strongly favour (3) employing tradeable energy quotas - that may make the poor and those who use little energy rich, whilst restricting the energy extravagance of the wealthy.
That I would favor, too (I mean, n. 3). There are alternatives, though. I would rather favor: 4. Use our resources to develop renewable energy and/or nuclear, so that we won't need fossil fuels any more.
I agree entirely Ugo, I meant to have a number 4. A much, much more vigorous drive towards viable alternatives is the best option. And that's where energy efficiency comes into its own - enabling activity at a much lower level of energy consumption produced from alternative sources.
How about a number 5. Cut the global population to a level that is sustainable? This would eliminate all of out current energy shortage, water shortage, land-water-air pollution problems?
That is going to happen anyway because of our gross population overshoot has been facilitated, and sustained (presently, by fossil fuels. Take that away and we are toast as a species.
Hopefully you are proposing following this option in the context of attempting to minimize our current exchange income in terms large scale exchange media like dollars and euros rather than maximizing it (consistent, of course, with the constraint of producing adequate levels of total income). If we do not find a way to substantially decouple the production of pychic income from the consumption of natural resources, then carbon free techno-fixes are not going to get us out of trouble.
If the alternatives to carbon based energy are more expensive than fossil fuels then even the OECD countries may have difficulty producing the constant increases in current exchange income in dollars, euros, etc. that are need for 'healthy' functioning of the financial system, let alone allowing countries like China and India to catch up to us as fast as possible. We need to reduce our total demand on the earth's resources and not just to reduce carbon emissions.
1. Carry on as now and waste vast amounts of energy
2. Implement all energy efficiency measures available to us - keep this party going as long as possible
3. (2) + a system of energy rationing to counter Jevons
The Kyoto treaty and others set to emerge work to counter (1) and strive to implement measures that result in (3) without specifically printing rationing coupons.
there are several phenomena that the climate models don't consider and that could make warming much more serious than currently believed. Among these, the saturation of the CO2 sinks, the positive feedback of the methane hydrates and those of the ice/albedo system. We just don't know enough to be able to say whether depletion is enough to "save" us from global warming.
This is a crucial point that is too often glossed over when peak fossil fuels are discussed wrt climate models. What I haven't seen mentioned are the results of 600 ppm from anthropogenic emissions mated with other positive feedbacks, such as;
Amazon's 2005 drought created huge CO2 emissions
Increasing temperatures drive up humidity, causing more warming
Methane releases accelerate as Arctic thaws
While we might not reach 1000ppm based on anthropogenic emissions alone, positive feedbacks will take us far above the GHG levels envisioned by those focused only on emissions reductions from peak fossil fuels.
Nobel Scientist: "Long before we run out of oil, we will run out of atmosphere"
This is important to point out since all global warming event of the past where natural we know that once a warming even is initiated it tends to continue. Most everything I've seen on the issue cannot assign the total C02 levels to a single source for the most part. Only the snowball earth final warming trend seems to be causes by volcanic C02 build up with a effectively shut down ecosystem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
In general it seems that as a planet warms organic carbon is converted to C02 and methane is released as above. Thus the warmer the climate the lower the carbon content of the soils. Also of course plan respiration plays a large and generally unkown role. Natural fire events probably expand as the climate changes etc.
If you read everything about global warming then hopefully you will come to the same conclusion I have that anthropogenic warming is simply the accelerant that started a fire its no longer the driving force.
I think only one aspect of human pollution is still playing a big role and thats sulfur dioxide and particulate levels in the atmosphere from coal. This is a guess on my part but we saw the dust bowl develop during the Great Depression. My opinion was that this dramatic climate change was linked to a sudden drop in the amount of coal burned as the great depression hit. I think we will see a similar situation develop as the world industry slows. So I'd not be surprised to see a similar set of extreme climate events occur over the next several years. Given that the major sources are more widespread and China is playing a big role it may be different but I expect a climatic shock from a rapid drop in particulate and sulfur pollutants to play a role.
Later on if we see a sharp increase in oil prices and a real drop in driving because of the cost of gasoline we should see a second wave of climate change as local smog levels drop. Overall given that the result is more solar radiation hitting the ground one can expect that we would see warmer drier soils develop with higher moisture content in the atmosphere. Water is a potent green house gas. This leads to stronger winds which result in even more drying and more water in the atmosphere.
So in my opinion deep recessions/depression cause a sort of mini runaway greenhouse event based on shifts in the water vapor cycle and drying soils. This is driven by loss of smog.
from wiki: "The ratio of the increase in atmospheric CO2 to emitted CO2 is known as the airborne fraction (Keeling et al., 1995); this varies for short-term averages but is typically about 45%"
A large fraction of the CO2 which we emit is being absorbed by the world (mostly the ocean, but we don't know where it is all going) if any secondary feedback mechanisms begin to kick in, or these carbon sinks stop "sinking" as they saturate, then the effect that we have on the world could suddenly spike. Fortunately neither of these events has happened yet.
Unfortunately, there are signs that this may not continue much longer - warm oceans don't store CO2 as well, and acidified oceans cause a whole other set of problems. Climate related changes such as melting of permafrost / changing of style of vegetation cover can both potentially cause large emissions in CO2 (warming is unlikely to create more rainforest in the short term, perhaps long term after new rainfall patterns have been established).
I don't think that there is enough oil/gas around to permanently stuff this world up, but if we attempt to replace oil with coal, unless reserves are drastically optimistic, then there is more than enough coal around to cause significant problems.
I agree (not necessarily about the Dust Bowl). I expect to see a spike in temperatures over the next few years, as manufacturing declines and the resulting smog levels drop. We've already seen how particulate matter caused 'global coolong' in the mid century (as soon as we cleaned up the smog, AGCC resumed right where it had left off). Reduced smog levels letting in extra warming is one of those unintended consequences we hear about all the time.
I'm not sure what options there are to counteract this. There have been suggestions of the pragmatic (spew inert particulates into the air, long-term consequences unknown) to the ludicrous (massive orbital solar blinds). Perhaps we could simply require everyone to paint their rooves a light colour, to reflect the heat as we reduce particulate emissions.
The 9/11 effect when airplanes where grounded supports that this will be and issue. And as Andrew noted above our carbon sinks my be getting full.
This article is extreme and I don't necessarily agree with its conclusions but it seems to have a lot of info.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/32903
I used Dust Bowl as and example no telling what will really happen since the pollution patterns are different now.
The key point is that most of the evidence indicates that current C02 levels are sufficient to put the earth on a warming trend as has occurred naturally in the past. In fact they are probably a lot higher than levels that actually triggered a warming cycle in the past.
This suggests that natural feedback loops are already running and its doubtful we can stop the warming the only issue is how high will it go ? Probably continued use of fossil fuels at this point makes the eventual peak temperatures exponentially worse as trends are accelerated and loops run faster then they ever have in the past. Not only have we probably triggered a major warming trend but we probably are supercharging it.
This is where thoughts about local climate issues i.e global dimming because of pollution are important. I suspect we have a lot of micro feedback loops we triggered methane release etc etc that will cause a lot higher temperatures and faster warming then the global models indicate. I don't think they really model this sort of spreading micro climate change.
Think of it like a lot of isolated bacteria growing exponentially in their local environments then covering the whole area. Or think about a large glass window and shoot small pellets randomly at the window. Each pellet leaves only a small crack but even with a random pattern the entire window is soon shattered.
Our climate models can't really model this sort of concept its outside the scope but it does suggest that if this is right then the models are off by several orders of magnitude in their results both in time and in extremes.
The recent changes in arctic ice cover which are from a similar concept un-modeled cracking and erosion of the ice is a huge factor its effectively the same as the pellet idea and it seems to have result in a order of magnitude faster decline. So a high end projection would basically take our current climate models and multiply the temperature changes by ten and dived the time intervals by 10.
I really think that by doing this you get something thats within a order of magnitude of what will really happen. It may be twice as fast or extreme as what really happens but its much closer I suspect than our current models. Thus something forecast to happen in 100 years probably will occur within 10 or 20 years.
Before mankind forest fires probably played the role of providing global dimming early in a warming cycle only to have even faster warming once they ended.
Eventually as far as I can tell the cycle ends with large deserts on the continents and wind blowing dust into the ociean causing alagae blooms and plankton blooms eventually resulting in large oil deposits.
We have this right now with the Sahara for example so think of most of the world looking like the Sahara for say up to 1 million years before the system finally cools.
"The key point is that most of the evidence indicates that current C02 levels are sufficient to put the earth on a warming trend as has occurred naturally in the past".
We have been in the longest interglacial period for long time. IMO this must make us vulnerable to runaway warming and biospheric dystrophy.
Without arguing about anything else, it's very well established that the Dust Bowl was caused:
a) By *really* bad farming and ranching practices [speaking as an old farmboy, who grew up on a 100-year-old farm that still had topsoil]
b) And the inevitable drought episode.
The Wikipedia entry on Dust Bowl is OK.
One of the strongest predictions of climate models is that warming temperatures induce changes to Hadley Cell circulation, one of whose effects is long-term drought in the US Southwest.
What caused the drought ?
What caused the Hadley Cell circulation to change ?
Global dimming can work in reverse as industrial output slows.
I think its interesting actually that the heat island effect of cities is well known yet how a city effects the regional then lager climate patters is barely studied. Obviously how the soil is tilled and when it is tilled changes the moisture content of the soils. And obviously changes in coal burning change the amount of particulate matter in the air but the combination of the two or even both individually are not well studied at the climate level.
Another example I'm interested in moving to Oregon a lot of the cities now have flooding problems I found it interesting that houses that had been built 50-100 years ago now where being flooded obviously the flood peaks had probably increased. A suspicious cause is of course removal of the forest cover. Although this obvious link is actually debated. However moving outward increased erosion is so obvious that its accepted by all this dumps more sediments into the streams and thence into the ocean which in turn acts to increase algae blooms helped along of course with our fertilizers. These blooms eventually cause the dead zone ocean conditions as the material rots. This may withdraw C02 and it might add methane who knows I've not found any studies. But my point is that local changes can eventually cause larger regional changes. How these are linked into our larger regional climate systems seems to be a real blank spot.
In general the interest focuses eventually on water vapor the forgotten greenhouse gas.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ge-Hy/Global-Warming-and-the-Hydrologic...
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html#wv
Sorry for such a large quote but I got the impression from your response that you felt that you understood the cause from a wiki entry on the dust bowl.
I'd suggest its more complex and that we don't really understand what we have done. The combination of particulate and sulfur dioxide pollution from industrialization and various farming practices regardless of how well they control erosion since its soil moisture thats the issue do influence the local water vapor cycles and thence the global climate. My opinion is we will soon learn that C02 is really only a cycle initiator and that changes in water vapor dominate the climate cycle.
I didn't learn this from a Wiki entry, that was just a convenient pointer.
My father had a B.S. in Agronomy.
I grew up on a farm that had been in the family for 100 years. Farm kids learn about groundcover, crop rotation, contour plowing, before they're 10.
In any case, even without that, it was certainly covered in AP American History, in my Pennsylvania high school, circa 1963. These days, many schools teach this history in middle school. IOf course, *everybody* could be wrong...
Here's a map of Dust Bowl area. Here's a map of *current* coal plants. I don't have a map handy for 1930, but the population & industry was more concentrated in the NorthEast than now.
The sulfate/acid rain issue was primarily in the NorthEast, where the heavy industry was concentrated. When I was growing up near Pittsburgh, PA, in the 1950s, the pollutions was awful if you went downtown ... i.e., I'm quite familiar with particulate matter in the air, because I could see it as I drove 20 miles South into Pittsburgh.
The Dust Bowl didn't have that kind and density of industry there or upwind.
People certainly do study UHI & related effects on local climate.
See Mark Jacobson at Stanford.
I'm not sure why water vapor is a forgotten GHG. Climate scientists I talk to know about it. So does the IPCC.
There's always more to know, but one more time:
1) The usual oscillations cause periodic droughts, especially in the US Southwest.
2) If you farm and ranch in *really dumb* ways in such an area, sooner or later it catches up with you. The US Government spent a lot of effort to change the practices.
What Will Stewart neglects to mention is that a lot of this permafrost has already melted at least once since the last ice age during the holocene optimum and that methane has a far shorter residency time in the atmosphere than CO2.
1. The fact that it has melted before has little bearing on the amount of buried peat that will outgas its carbon in the form of methane.
2. The shorter residency time is more than outweighed by the fact that methane as a greenhouse gas is more than 25 times more potent than C02.
1. If catastrophic warming is supposed to be the outcome of the melting of this permafrost why did the Holocene Optimum come to an end? Bear in mind this peat built up primarily in past interglacials rather than in the current one.
2. The shorter residency time thanks to the reactivity of OH radicals in the troposphere helps to prevent a buildup over time given the graphs clearly indicate that the permafrost in question won't all melt at once, which leads back to point 1. Methane may be 25 times more potent but there is currently only about 1.7 ppm of it in the atmosphere compared to about 390 ppm for CO2.
The short residence time for CH4 is important and means it can't really be thought of in the same way as CO2. We think about CO2 in terms of reservoirs, with carbon moving between ground, atmosphere and ocean reservoirs. CO2 can 'build up' in the atmosphere reservoir. This is not the case for CH4. Over all but the shortest timescales the atmospheric CH4 concentration is, to a first approximation, directly proportional to the rate of emission. It's not critical to consider the CH4 reservoir; however the total amount of carbon in the CH4 is still important as CO2 results from the reaction with OH.
Re 1,
Why doesn't water vapour feedback lead to a hothouse or snowball earth? It acts continually amplifying both warming and cooling excursions, but it hits limits. It all depends on the circumstances.
Restricting considerations to the Arctic region: Even if current conditions are not yet out of the Holocene, with a further climb to 500-600ppm, also considering the reduction in "global dimming" as cited in the Zecca paper. The Arctic will very likely be in unknown territory later this century.
So it is quite likely that we will see significant addition to our emissions from the Arctic. There is a risk this addition could be substantial.
Re 2,
The 25 times potency figure is based on a 100 year timeframe precisely because of the action of OH radicals. On a sub-decadal basis the figure is nearer 70 (72 IIRC). The key factor here is the size and duration of a CH4 emissions pulse, large and fast will extend atmospheric lifetime, hence raising potency above 25.
The current increase in CH4 is not due to methane release from clathrates or permafrost melt. However Semilitov/Shakhova (1) and the International Siberian Shelf expedition team have already noted significant recent localised CH4 outgasssing from marine CH4 clathrates that is greater than in previous studies. Their work suggests the process is starting: e.g. "we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. That may cause ~12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming."
David Archer notes (2) in the abstract that "any possible methane release will take place over time scales of millennia." And that the most important impact of CH4 is in it's final form - as reduced to CO2 by OH radicals and oxidation. However Archer states in the body of the paper that "The rate and extent to which methane carbon can escape the sediment column in response to warming is.. ..very difficult to constrain at present."
Apropo of which; it is worth noting that the source of the 50 Gt of methane cited by Shakhova(1) as being "highly possible for abrupt release at any time" is that proportion in proximity to vertical disturbances in the sedimentary column. These vertical disturbances can allow ocean warming to penetrate more rapidly than the layer-to-layer warming one might typically expect.
1. "Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?"
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf
2. "Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change" David Archer, http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2007.hydrate_rev.pdf
Shooting a pellet gun at a picture window.
We have cracking ice.
We have cracking sediments.
Whats really funny to me is that expansion of hairline cracks is the number one cause of structural failure.
Engineers understand this phenomena in detail (Mean Time To Failure) for mechanical systems from airplanes to bridges yet for some reason its practically scoffed at by many geologists.
Yet they deal with both volcanic eruptions and earthquakes driven but this issue.
The world can and does crack.
bingo
I should have been more clear, the "cracks" are already present. Given that, perhaps a better analogy would be a steel bar with a small notch cut around it which will snap earlier than one without a notch. Use the notched bar in constructing a tower and you get closer to the global picture.
As I see it there are 2 major unkowns with regards oceanic methane clathrate destabilisation and land permafrost melt. Both pertain to the future of sea-ice cover. That's because sea ice is the factor that could most amplify the regional warming of the Arctic.
1) How fast will we see the transition to a seasonally ice-free Arctic (no ice in summer).
There's the fast path (1 to 2 decades) or slow path (final quarter of 21st century as per model studies). It should become clear by 2010 whether 2007 was a one-off from which the sea ice will recover or whether a new more rapid loss regime is in place. If it's a new regime we could well be on a fast path transition to a seasonally ice free state. This is crucial because of the ocean warming that comes with open summer seas, the newly open areas in 2007 were as much as 5 deg C above average. Furthermore open water allows water vapour to transport to the atmosphere enhancing storminess which has a pivotal role in mixing warm water from the surface into deeper layers of the ocean. Researchers in 2007 noted areas of open water kept open into December by powerful storms fed by water vapour and heat fluxes from the open water.
After the transition to a seasonally ice free state there is the transition to a perennial ice free state. It would take a massive increase in GHGs (Greenhouse Gasses) to sustain large areas of open water into the cold of the sunless winter, that's because the winter regime is dominated by infra-red heat loss into space. It's precisely that infra-red that is blocked by GHGs. However Abbot & Tzipperman (1) have suggested that clouds could provide a mechanism that substantially lowers GHG requirements for an ice-free state.
2) How fast will heat from a warming ocean penetrate into the ocean floor sediments, this is unkown.
Because of these 2 key unknowns I'd be dubious of anyone who's saying we will see substantial clathrate destabilisation from the Arctic ocean shortly. The point is we just don't know. But we know enough to know it cannot be ruled out, and that the further we go down our current emissions path the more we run the risk. The danger is once it gets started it may not stop (given the additional support of our past emissions). In the past year I've gone from viewing AGW as the most pressing issue to viewing Peak Oil as the most pressing. But if we ignore either it's at our peril.
Back to lurking. ;)
1. Sea ice, high-latitude convection, and equable climates. D. S. Abbot and Eli Tziperman. GRL 2007.
www.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/reprints/Abbot-Tziperman-2008a.pdf
PS interesting article about Siberian land carbon - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/10/climate-change-copenhagen
The relevant Copenhagen Conference Poster Session abstracts here - http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1755-1315/6/4
Also, some of the permafrost in Alaska is within 1C of melt temp, iirc. A lot of methane undersea and in other areas is also close, within a 2 or 3 degrees, iirc.
Ah, here's one of the references for sea floor clathrates:
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=120442
I would like to point out a simple observation: The scientists are doing amazing work, but they have underestimated badly on the speed of climate change. This is not something risk analysis suggests is wise to continue to underestimate.
Methane is currently rising. New areas of bubbling methane have been found. Large ones. What more do we need to know?
Climate change is here and now, not in a decade or a century. It is current events. We ignore this at our peril.
Cheers
We don't even need to invoke clathrates to foresee doom; the ground carbon store in permafrost is estimated at over a trillion tons. When the permafrost melts, microbes get busy and metabolize all those yummy organics. CO2 and methane are the result.
That kind of begs the question of how that carbon ever accumulated in the first place during past interglacials. Coming from Scotland I'm aware of the awkward little fact that peat bogs are actually usually a carbon sink when they are not covered in permafrost. Maybe when dealing with an educated audience you shouldn't insult people's intelligence by using transparently dubious scare tactics? Better science would mean fewer Stephen Macintyre type debunkers leaving people on the right wing of the political spectrum with the impression that all of AGW is a politically-motivated hoax.
Not scare tactics, I promise:
Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change: Implications for the global carbon cycle (pdf)
When glaciers disappear, the bugs move in
:X
Obviously, it accumulated abiotically!
Not sure if that is an attempt at humour or not but in other contexts environmentalists have no problem admitting the following:-
http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/database/records/zgpz0034.html
While tropical regions store carbon in vegetation, soil is now understood to play a larger storage role in temperate regions. Total carbon stored in British soils, for example, is estimated at 22 billion tonnes, equivalent to more than 100 years of carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and vehicles. Researchers from the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in Edinburgh have found that Scotland's peat bogs store 75 percent of the organic carbon tied up in soils and vegetation in the UK.
There's a difference between something being carbon storage and its being a carbon sink.
Peat bogs store carbon laid down some time ago. They don't absorb carbon, and if heated up, dried up, or cut up and burned they release carbon. Imagining that because peat bogs store carbon means that they absorb it is like imagine that because an oil reservoir stores oil, more must be growing abiotically.
Soils store carbon, and can absorb or release it over the course of a year depending on conditions. If you let lots of things grow, they store carbon; if you cut everything down and leave the stumps for the sun to dry out, they release carbon.
The carbon cycle is fairly complex, and many of the details are not well understood. But it's plain that the extra we're putting in exceeds the cycle's ability to process. Some ask how we can be uncertain about the details and still claim to know that humans are causing these problems, and these problems will get worse in the future. Well, you don't have to know all the details to note the general trend.
It's rather like getting drunk. I don't have to know about that alcohol is processed in my liver by alcohol dehydrogenase which is a dimer, that its coenzyme is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, that zinc is required for coordination, and so on until the end result of the alcohol turned into an aldehyde. It's pretty plain when my consumption of alcohol has exceeded my body's ability to process that alcohol. I get tipsy and start acting like a dickhead, so it's time to cut back or even stop. People understood this long before enzymes were discovered.
Likewise, we don't have to know all the precise details of the carbon cycle to understand that we really need to stop burning so much stuff.
And since, as this site is so fond of telling us, that stuff is going to run short some day, even if burning coal gave us vitamin C and burning oil did nothing more nasty than making pretty girls smile, at some point we'll have to stop. At some point, we have to rely on electricity from renewables and/or nuclear. May as well start now.
Environmentalists don't really have a problem "admitting" that well-managed soils store carbon. After all, that's an excuse not to cut down trees, and we're all tree-hugging hippies, right?
Peat bogs absorb huge quantities of carbon based on old vegetation created through photosynthesis that's why Scottish peat bogs have a carbon content equal to 75 years worth of carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and vehicles in a UK context. That's a lot of carbon so it should go without saying that peat bogs represent a sink in the carbon cycle. Melt them out and odds on you are going to slowly start generating more peat again just as happened in former areas of permafrost in Scotland at the end of the last ice age. I know this isn't part of the script that you have been trained to repeat on boards like this but your scare tactic doomsday scenario is far from the only possible outcome. I would point you back again to the fact that these permafrost covered peat bogs would already have melted at least once since the last Ice Age during the Holocene Optimum with no catastrophic warming episode. Do a bit of googling and you'll find the Siberian climate was wetter as well as warmer at that point:-
http://www.citeulike.org/group/1174/article/1307193
Annual precipitation in Siberia was predicted to be 95 mm greater in the mid-Holocene than now. Most of the increase was concentrated in East Siberia (154 mm average increase). The precipitation anomalies are small in the south. Large precipitation anomalies are found in central and northeastern Siberia. This location corresponds rather closely to the large anomalies in January temperature in East Siberia. The annual precipitation Increase was > 200 mm more than present precipitation in Yakutia. This increase corresponds to the deep penetration of moisture-demanding dark-needled species (Pinus sibirica. Abies sibirica, Picea obovata) into East Siberia in the mid-Holocene, where currently only drought-resistant light-needled species (Larix spp.) are found. Another area of increased precipitation was along the Polar Circle in West Siberia and at the base of the Taymyr Peninsula in East Siberia. In combination with 2-5 degrees C warmer summers, moister climates there allowed forests to advance far northward into what is now the Tundra zone
Kiashu's explanation was very good -- maybe it would help to consider that deep permafrost extends down to hundreds of meters and took hundreds of thousands of years to form. This is sequestered carbon, i.e., carbon that is not available to the global carbon cycle. It hardly beggars belief that 1 trillion tons of carbon, or more, are sequestered down there.
Plants certainly were the source of this carbon way back when, but that carbon has been locked in permafrost through several glacial cycles. Until now.
these permafrost covered peat bogs would already have melted at least once since the last Ice Age during the Holocene Optimum with no catastrophic warming episode.
You are neglecting the amount of carbon that has been added to the atmosphere over the last century; humans weren't burning fossil fuels in the Holocene, so CO2 levels were lower, hence the combination of AGW and methane clathrates wasn't a problem during that time period.
The problem with that line of argument is that increased CO2 levels fertilize plant growth through photosynthesis thus increasing peat formation and enhancing the role of the peat bog ecosystem as a carbon sink. Peat bogs are formed at high latitudes in flat areas with poor drainage due to low surface evaporation. That is still going to be the case over much of Siberia just as it was in the Holocene Optimum and past interglacials because increased atmospheric CO2 levels are not going to change the surface topography.
Except that they don't, always, and commonly you get increased growth for a bit, then it levels off as the plants adjust to the new CO2 concentrations.
And the conditions going along with the increased CO2 - high temperature, rough weather - don't help plant growth, either.
For example, articles here, and here, and here.
And of course, the high temperatures mean the ocean's ability to act as a carbon sink declines, while the increasing concentration of CO2 in the water turns it more acidic, killing off life in it, as discussed here.
When peat bogs heat up, they release CO2.
You'd know this stuff if you'd done the reading you claimed.
Exiled Scot, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you arguing against the existence of the permafrost carbon store?
No I am pointing out that when these peat bogs are unfrozen as has happened in the Holocene Optimum and past interglacials they typically act as carbon sinks. That is why there is so much carbon there in the first place.
We don't seem to have a good tight timeline handle on the entire sequencing during the interglacials, and though the peat permafrost is the case in point here, the volume of permafrost gravel beneath the tundra is mind boggling. Considering that the gravel is glacial outwash and that arctic regions are now arid to semiarid, that our data points could be closer and that the full range of changes are enormous, there is plenty of wiggle room in every interglacial model.
About 5 years ago scientists started voicing concern about the fact that these Siberian peat bogs would go from being a constant in global climate model terms thanks to the permafrost to a variable upon thawing out and pointed out (possibly motivated in part by a desire to attract research money) that although they normally act as a carbon sink the potential is there for the opposite to be the case on a very large scale given the sheer quantities of carbon involved. Environmental activists then latched onto the concern expressed and started reporting it as if it were proven scientific fact. Unfortunately this whole AGW issue has been politicized and groups like Greenpeace on the one hand and individuals like Rush Limbaugh on the other cherrypick only the snippets that fit their agenda and ruthlessly propagandize on that basis.
No arguement on all the competing posses screwing up the picture. Considering all that is at stake that is probably unavoidable. UAF is doing some very basic on the ground research on what warming would do the arctic vegetation, but on a fairly tiny scale. One of their findings that interested me was the tendency for a warmer tundra to support woody plants (stunt trees and shrubs). I saw no estimates on whether this change would be a carbon positive or negative influence.
Huge amounts of ice free arctic water will no doubt change cloud cover and precip. We don't have the data to make decent projections. I had noticed the clouds from SE Asia monsoons drifted north and then headed back east overland to Alaska and gave us our summer rains for most of the last dozen years. The last few years clouds seem to be generated over the open water above Siberia and head our way the last half of summer. My observations are intemittant and far from professional, so I'd love to see a twenty year animation of what is really happening. But that change is happening is obvious up here. Just what that means in the short term and where tipping points are is very much in the realm of conjecture.
None the less, and despite the din of the screaming, I have long had concerns that we humans are now capable of doing something
"to turn the sun again' us"
We won't survive that, so the utmost caution is advised.
On a brighter note these two hour March sunsets are lovely, late winter is beautiful in these parts
I am pointing out that when these peat bogs are unfrozen as has happened in the Holocene Optimum and past interglacials they typically act as carbon sinks. That is why there is so much carbon there in the first place.
It's almost certainly not the case that the net carbon flux from thawing permafrost is into the ground; we have a lot of evidence that the net flux is into the atmosphere. Check out my link upthread, especially the section titled "The fate of carbon from thawed permafrost" and Figure 6:
During the summer the surface layer of the tundra melts and plants are able to grow. As they die they add to the biomass they grew in, building up layer upon layer. That's how the glacially scarred wasteland of bare rock, rubble and erratics can (given time) become tundra and at lower lattitudes peat bog. Gradually over the seasons the surface layer is buried and it's biomass gets locked in the permafrost where it cannot decay. The accumulation is a slow process, but it happens for millenia.
When the permafrost melts during eras of warming (warming for whatever reason, be it Milankovitch cycles or human activity) bacterial activity is able to act upon it. So CH4 and CO2 are released. This process will have been active in the rise out of all of the glacials of the Pleistocene. In peat acidity and waterlogging are the factors that stop/limit microbial activity. During drought peat can release it's CO2 very rapidly, by burning.
Someone really needs to do an article on Jevon's Paradox in a post peak world.
JP can't possibly hold true in a post-peak world. If NEW TECH lets me use 1/2 as much fuel to do job X, then all that will change is that two people will now do job X, using the same amount of fuel. Right? Correct. JP seems to be holding... but... that doesn't mean we can use any more resource, because we are still now post peak and can't get anymore to market any faster.
So what are we left with? Same amount of fuel used; twice the job done. This equates to growth (or more likely, less shrinkage) and will be good for the economy, buying us time and extra resources to get those alt energies you speak of.
How is that a bad thing? Seriously, people, stop with the Jevon’s Paradox. This ain’t the 1880’s and this kind of thinking now is just too late. Efficiency is good.
I thought it was clear than Jevon's Paradox, the rebound effect didn't apply in a post peak world? Within a declining envelope of total energy post peak, there is no scope to increase absolute consumption. Is this contentious?
I think it is a valid point that energy saved by increased efficiency is not globally saved but used by others. But the same is true with regard to alternative or new sources of energy. Suppose we would increase wind energy dramatically - oil, gas and coal would still be burned in similar quantities. However since part of the demand is covered otherwise, prices would be cheaper leading to more demand and maybe a little less production. The same holds true with increased efficiency: Increased efficiency is a means to cover part of the energy demand other than by oil, gas and coal. This leads to a softening of future price spikes and some more ressources left in the ground for future generations.
So although I agree with the effect I would assume it eats up only part of the energy saved by efficiency increases.
Since I seem to be the designated advocatus diaboli...
As long as you've got your piece in the pipeline, maybe you could prepare something for the comments explaining why CHP district heating is incompatible with CCS?
CHP is not incompatible with CCS, and indeed the Dane's have CHP plants fitted with CCS - I believe. You make a judgement to build super-efficient generating plant and to then sacrifice some of the efficiency to limit environmental externalities.
In the UK, coal fired plant is 37% efficient. There they want to either retrofit old plant or build new plant with CCS that will reduce the energy efficiency to 30%. So we will have to import more coal - and energy imports are already bankrupting our country.
The situation in the US is a bit different, since you have so much coal. But i'd still argue that its better to extract 3* the energy from that coal than to simply blast 60 to 70% off as waste heat.
Euan,
I have just been reading the letter's of two "experts" on this matter and as usual there is a conflict of opinion.
I am no expert on the steam cycle, but I think in simple terms, the condensing takes place at much below atmospheric pressure. Whilst there are huge quantities of latent heat from the condensing of water, it is low grade
at the sub atmospheric pressures involved. This is done to maximise the thermal efficiency of the turbine. Neither "expert" says it cannot be done, as usual it is an argument concerning the economics of doing it and for what the heat is useful for. The climate also affects the econmics because low grade heat can be more useful in cold weather than in hot weather.
The same problem occurs with refrigeration plant. In the food industry there is loads of waste heat from the refrigeration systems that is often dumped into the ambient air. The problem is it is in two forms; super heated gas which is high grade and can be used to heat water effectively. I think this high grade heat is about 20% of the total (I am going off memory, so I will stand being corrected). The next stage is the condensation of the refrigerant, which in quantity is 4 times greater, but is low quality and difficult to use because condensing normally occurs close to ambient temperature. In winter, this low grade heat can be used for space heating, though this is often not economic, in summer its use is very limited.
When god made the laws of thermodynamics, he did not realise man would be daft enough to try and exploit them.
Wet Combustion for CHP - Improved Efficiency and water cleaning at the same time
It is quite possible to improve Combined Heat and Power (CHP) by burning fuels in the presence of water (dirty water or even sewer water). Normally, using "dry combustion" their is only about 10% water content in the exhaust from combustion. If the combustion is done with the injection of small amounts of water all along the combustion zone (of a combustor), the amount of water content in the combustor gradually increases along with the temperature.
You may ask, "Why would we want to do this?" Well, "wet combustion" increases CHP efficiency. Also, dirty water can be burned and many contaminants (including hydrocarbons) will be burned. In the case of the burning of sewer water, you get a triple advantage. You destroy any bacteria and other biologically active species in the combustion zone (at about 1000C), and if it is done properly all of the carbon-containing molecules will be converted into CO2. Also, the water content of the exhaust can be as high as 30-40%, which can make the CHP efficiency 10-15% higher. Finally, after trapping the heat from the water for the heating portion of CHP, the water can be condensed. It is MUCH cleaner than the water that entered the combustion chamber (effectively it has been steam distilled, or better). At the very least it can be released into the environment without as much concern, but it can also be recycled for drinking water. Given the water of combustion (burning of the hydrogen in hydrocarbons to make water), in the exhaust, it is possible to run such a process to produce a net amount of clean water.
So, it is quite possible to procure the advantages of CHP for CO2 reduction (with higher efficiency) AND to clean water at the same time.
When you apply the existing technologies to new situations they may not be as well suited as alternative technologies that have been overlooked in the previous situations.
Hope that this is helpful,
Ian
I dont get how that would work. CHP like any other power source usig a steam cycle need as hot steam as possible for maximum efficiency and how would introducing moisture in the combustion help that? I would rather try to get the fuel even dryer and use a gasifiaction cycle to get fuel for a high temperature boiler or gas turbine with an additional steam cycle for maximal efficiency.
But introducing water ought to make a higher fuel load possible in a fixed size boiler and then can the energy transported out of the boiler via the steam be recovered in a condencer heating district heating water. But that do not provide any additional high value electricity. It is common in Sweden to condence the wapor in the smoke to make garbage incineration more efficient and get more heating kWh out of undried biomass fuel.
Could you please explain how introducing water could help CHP plant efficiency?
Magnus,
You are correct that a higher water content in the combustion zone allows the burning of more fuel in the same space. There are other advantages:
1) One of the dominant failure mechanisms of combustion systems and the most important design consideration is the maximum temperature (at any time) that the components will be exposed to. When dry combustion is used, the temperature along the center line is usually much hotter than at the walls, for example. A typical temperature differential is about 600C between the wall and the hottest point along the center line. Doubling or tripling water content dramatically lowers the temperature difference. The temperature differential can often be reduced below 100C in a wet combustion system. This has all kinds of advantages including reducing the NOx production (in air combustion) and reducing soot production (along the walls). However, it also allows for a higher average temperature because the peak temperature is reduced. A higher average efficiency leads to higher combustion efficiency (Carnot efficiency increases as the average temperature in the combustion zone rises). Also the time average temperature change is also dramatically reduced (again because the average BTU content per unit mass dramatically increases with steam content). This increases the life-time of the components.
2) If you burn more fuel in the same space, the capital cost of the system for a given quantity of heat output is reduced
3) Dirty water can add a few BTUs of "free fuel" to the cost of the system (along with cleaning of the dirty water!)
4) Steam engines are very old and they have been improved a great deal since they were first introduced. The thermal to mechanical coupling efficiency in a steam turbine (or a wet combustion turbine) between a high water content exhaust is higher because there are more BTUs per unit volume (and mass) in the gases and especially when they are condensed to liquid water. The principal thermodynamic reason is the huge heat of evaporation of water. (dominates the climate system too!!!) ==> hydrogen bonding of liquid water is a powerful force!!
There are several patents and papers on this subject that I could refer you to if you like. The traditional reason for NOT doing wet combustion is that MOST applications of combustors for electricity production simply dump the waste heat with the exhaust and they are not used for CHP. CHP changes the economics and thermodynamics heavily in favor of wet combustion. BTW, it also dramatically reduces NOx (and unburned fuel) because the max-min temperature differential in the combustion zone(the principal reason for the ugly trade-off between these two pollutants) is so dramatically reduced as the amount of water (and the BTU content/unit mass of the exhaust increases). Improving the time to profit by reducing the up-front capital cost per unit BTU is a significant added bonus.
Again, the design and economics of the current dry combustion systems were created with a simple (non-CHP) combustion paradigm in mind. Wet combustion is a whole different technology with a completely different paradigm (IMO much more appropriate for CHP).
I hope that this is helpful to you.
Ian
Ok, combustion is an extremely complex area of physics and optimization and I only understand a very tiny part of a mind boggling huge area.
Wet steam turbines were a new idea for me, I got the impression that you realy do not want to have condensation within the turbine or water in the steam flow since it erodes the turbine blades.
But I do know that old jet engince used water injection to increase the mass flow and thrust in feeble 50:s jet engines and that water injection can be used in gas turbine compressors to combine cooling that increases the compression efficiency with increased mass flow but then you keep it in the steam phase throughouth the turbine.
From my POW are CHP plants identical to electricity only plants with the minor changes of usig a shorter turbine with less expanson that condenses at a higher temperature and preassure to heat district heating water and you can also recover heat from the smoke via heatig more district heating water. The turbine part can then get more complex if you want to bleed steam for industrial uses or run it with different combinations of heat and electricity production but I dont get how that affects the boiler. I got the idea that boiler optimization idealy should be driven by the fuel characteristics and then it becommes more of a headache if the steam need varies a lot.
Magnus,
You are correct about Turbines not wanting to have condensation inside them (corrosion is a BIG issue). However, recycling the heat into a system using water injection is MUCH easier than for other combustion systems and is highly desirable to increase thermal efficiency. This is because a condenser can be inserted AFTER the turbine to condense the steam to water and use the incoming (cold) water as a heat sink which is then routed into the combustor. Condensers can be just a counter-flow double concentric tubes with cold water flowing through an outer jacket and the hot exhaust condensing on an inner surface. That condensed water is usually quite clean and it can then be used directly for CHP purposes (the outlet temperature of the condensed water is dependent on the design goal and the surface area of the condenser).
The incoming cold water is then heated with some of the waste heat which is then used for injection into the combustion zone. Pumping and pressurizing water (an incompressible fluid) is extremely energy efficient. For example, it take ~100X more energy to increase the pressure of air from 1 atm to 10 atm (0.1MPa to 1.0Mpa) than to increase the pressure of water the same amount. If you pressurize water to 10atm (1.0MPa) its boiling point increases to about 190C. You can therefore add a lot of heat to incoming ("cooling") water without it boiling (a key design consideration). This makes the efficiency of the system even better because you need less water to recycle the heat. Also, the whole point of combined heat and power is to use the exhaust and any waste heat from it for district heating or other purposes. Heating water for a swimming pool is a good example in a municipal setting.
Note, that a condenser to condense the water of combustion from a dry combustor is possible but its surface area must be HUGE (high capital cost). When you have 30-50% water content in your exhaust from a wet combustion system, condensing the water is MUCH easier (the relationship between humidity and the cost to condense it is not linear!). Once the water (dirty) has been combusted at 1000C you get any organic contaminant in the water being destroyed by hydroxyl radicals (very violent and efficient oxidizers which are produced by the breakage of an O-H bond in water at high temperature). Note that the transfer of heat is very efficient with those high steam concentrations so local "pockets" of low temperature are MUCH less likely than in a dry combustor. So once the water has been converted to steam in the combustion zone, the combustion gases convert a high percentage of their energy to electricity in a turbine (lots of energy in the steam). The remaining amount of energy in the combustion gases (40-70%) is left-over in the heat of evaporation of all the steam leaving the turbine. Converting that heat into usable heat in a CHP operation is efficient because you can readily convert (at least) 75% of the steam to water in a condenser (easy). That means that nearly all of the energy content of the steam that condensed has been captured in incoming (cold water) or for CHP purposes (i.e. heated water or air-less efficiently). Once the steam condenses at atmospheric pressure it has dropped about 80-90% of its energy content. The key to the whole operation for CHP is to use STEAM to condense to water to transfer the VERY high content of steam into water. Imagine CHP without that steam to water condensation!! Imagine trying to heat up water for swimming pool with only hot gases in contact with a heat exchange surface. Imagine the relative contact area. Steam converting to water transfers at least 10X (probably more like 100X) more heat per unit surface area than a dry hot gas. That is why we use a steamer to heat our vegetables!!
Most of this explanation would be "old hat" to a 19th century steam railway locomotive engineer or designer. Ironically, those steam engines were relatively efficient because of the use of steam! Of course, he wouldn't have known anything about NOx and wouldn't have cared about CO2, but the principles haven't changed. Water (and steam) are simply amazing things!!
Ian
I get the impression that you are mixing water flows with different chemical criteria, or in simpler words different cleanliness. This does not make sense for me.
You seem to be proposing a gas turbine type of plant like a PFBC with water injection in the combustion zone? Those are complex beasts since you need to compress the combustion air and clean the combustion gases enough to not wear down the power turbines from dust erosion.
And you description of a condensation heat exchanger is unfit for heat exchanging between a liquid and a gas medium where you handle the steam flow from a steam turbine.
I disagree. The Hydrogen Economy was around, afaict, in the wet dreams of futurists long before AGCC started being vigourously debated. The modern (read: corporatised) Hydrogen Economy has simply latched onto AGCC as a means to promote itself. Given that the vast majority of commercially-produced Hydrogen currently comes from Fossil sources, and given that entropy is unavoidable, the Hydrogen Economy can only make any sense when we already have an excess of Green Power (and even then, you'd probably use Anhydrous Ammonia as an energy carrier instead).
Will this be using the micronised coal water slurry in a slow speed diesel engine? as aluded to here (PDF)
The document shows that the most efficient way to move the coal would be by rail or boat which would help towards TOD development if used in combination with CHP, as you would be moving a large volume of people and coal in a smaller area.
Such a system could also make use of natural gas (and / or biogas) with direct injection to lower emissions (speculative)
If you can get a pure enough output of CO2 you could just vent it into a large vertical farm or greenhouse, which could also filter water and deal with compostable/digestable wastes.
Spending a fortune burying CO2 in the ground seems nonsense to me when its cheaper to make less of it (more efficient use of fossil fuels, expand nuclear & renewable electricity & electrify transport) then use it as a resource rather than a waste product.
Frankly, I think the whole discussion is mute because of a substance called methane hydrate (ironically nicknamed "fire-ice"). It has more carbon in it than all the oil, coal, and natural gas reserves combined! Worse, it releases the carbon into the air in the form of a super potent short term greenhouse gas when it melts, not just when it is burned like the other fossil fuels. Read the following paper I wrote on the subject, then ask yourself if we are going to "burn or freeze?"
Thirty percent of the Earth’s surface is land. Twenty percent of the land is permafrost. There is over a trillion tons of carbon frozen and buried in the land permafrost. More than half the land covered by the topmost layer of permafrost will probably thaw by 2050.
Permafrost ice contains a lot of methane (CH4) from past decomposition. CH4 is 70 times stronger than CO2 over 20 years. Decomposition will speed up when the permafrost thaws. A very large release of CH4 when the ice melts, followed by large chronic emission of CO2 and CH4.
A frozen peat bog in western Siberia the size of France and Germany put together contains about 500 billion tons of carbon. Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the Earth, with an increase in average temperature of about 3C in the last 40 years.
Even more Siberian permafrost is under the ocean, an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing. The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.
"...Researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea…” --"Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record," AP, 27 Aug '08
The CH4 level in the air never reached 750 parts per billion (ppb) the last million years, but is now 1,780 ppb. Currently about 8 billion tons of CH4 go into the air each year; 10 billion more would be like doubling the CO2 level for 20 years. Since the future amount of CH4 (or CO2) entering the air from melting permafrost isn’t known, it is not included at all in current climate models. The UN warned this year natural CH4 emissions are a major climate wild card.
“If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming.” --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegel, 17 April '08
Global warming /climate change is going to be an area where people have different opinions.
Most of the analyses which Ugo reviewed have two basic premises underlying them:
1. The climate change models are accurate predictors of the future climate.
2. Usable fossil fuels are limited in quantity and there are no other sources of CO2 (like methane hydrates) that will be a problem.
We would like to think we understand all the variables, but I don't think we really do. We need to have a little humility when looking at the issues. None of us really have all of the answers, as much as we would like to think we do.
Aside from the uncertainty resulting from potential non-anthropogenic sources, I think Ugo has been using a smallish value for the Charney sensitivity. The Charney sensitivity is the increase in average global temperature from a doubling of CO2 concentration, I thought it was estimated to be near 3C. 500ppm is (on a log scale) .83 of a doubling (from a preindustrial 280ppm), so if I assume 3C, this results in about 2.4C for 500ppm.
There is a lot of uncertainty about just what sorts of fossil fuels might be burnt. There is a lot of very poor quality coal, and huge amounts of peat are available under the permafrost. With no controls, we might succumb to the temptation to burn these. It would also be possible to fuel a power plant, by digging up and burning oil shale, although the efficiency would be low, and the pollution high,but a desperate enough society might well choose to do so.
The dependence of temperature on CO2 concentration has been much studied and there is something of a consensus value, but Hansen, et. al. worry about another kind of effect that they characterize as a 'tipping point'. As I understand it, the global sinks for CO2 are poorly understood. CO2 leaves the atmosphere in many ways. The rate at which it flows on each of these paths is known only to the precision of an 'educated guess'. There is almost no information about how these rates depend on temperature. (They are all thermodynamic processes, and MUST depend on temperature.) There is good reason to believe that for some of these sinks, the flow slows to zero at some temperature only slightly higher than present. At higher temperature than that, the flow direction reverses and the sink becomes a source. None of this that I am talking about is well enough understood to be put into quantitative models, so is not in anybody's model, but it is there in nature. Methane hydrates are one possible sink turning into a source, but there are others. And there is no understanding of the numbers about rates and equilibria. I can't think of any interpretation of these unknowns which can improve our comfort level.
Agreed about the warning signs of methane hydrate thawing.
In addition, I see no mention of "global dimming" here, which also cuts both ways, as you say. Any near-term reduction in FF combustion &/or commercial air travel is likely to trigger a snap-back effect, in which temps will rise suddenly as the atmosphere clears of particulates.
The methane, global dimming and many other influences over the climate are out of the scope of this review. Here we're looking at CO2 emission scenarios which I hope most agree have are a major impact on climate. 'Peak oil' concepts have been largely absent in the literature as Ugo shows. Encouragingly this is starting to change which should help product more accurate forecasts in the future.
Thanks for this review Ugo. It really does highlight a how this area has been ignored by climate science. It seems myopic not to consider fossil fuel reserves and their rates of production as key determinants to future emission scenarios.
Climate science maintains its fixation on demand side emission scenarios. These fall into three categories: IPCC SRES, IPCC stabilisation scenarios designed to stabilise atmospheric CO2 at various levels and scenarios derived from policy (20% down by 2020 etc). We desperately need a rigorous family of emission scenarios derived from the supply side as it is becoming clear that over this century fossil fuel reserves and the resulting envelope of production are critical.
Policy should be influenced by climate models – but we had better make sure those models are based on sound inputs. Policy within a demand side determined emission world is very different to that in a supply side emission world and it would be wise to work out when that transition will occur.
Chris- well said.
Climate impact is one of many externalities of the human economic system that science is attempting to quantify, including loss of biodiversity, water impacts, pollution, ecosystem and habitat loss, soil depletion, and others.
Since Cadillac Desert, the environmental community has been aware of water limits which are now 'bubbling' to the surface- many upcoming environmental conferences are addressing 'climate AND water', etc. Eventually we will need a multi-criteria framework for both supply side limiting inputs and demand side needs. To focus energy (and social) policy on ONE limiter will undoubtedly err in creating some other limiter in the system. Better defining our fossil balance sheet and likely size of future 'coupons', should we need to spend them, is an important step.
Chris, I wouldn't criticize too much the IPCC group. They did their best and they didn't neglect the supply problem. They collected data and models that seemed to them to be the best available; from these models and data they concluded that it was impossible to stem CO2 emissions from the supply side. But they couldn't "see" that there is more to that than the political scenarios produced by IEA and others. It is always our damned problem: hyperspecialization.
I agree about the IPCC. They used the best experts they could find. And for supplies of fossil fuels these would be....Resource Economists! Hence, there could be no limits.
Now, if you are a geologist there may be a way to talk to a climatologist and get them to hear your side of things. But first, be humble. You want the climatologist to be the expert on climate, so don't come at them with "As a geologist I am pretty confident there ain't enough fuels to worry about global warming." Just think about how'd you feel in their shoes.
So, to get on their good side, approach them as fellow scientists, natural scientists even. They breathe the same paradigm you do, considering the biophysical nature of existence, the universe, etc. Play that to your advantage.
Know something about how their models work. Essentially the world is broken into a 4-D cube space (3-D plus time) with differential equations connecting each cube. Matter and energy are transferred between cubes in all 6 directions. Consider the computational complexity of that! It may take 1 month to run a model. And some of the parameters, like aerosols, have wide uncertainty bars. So sensitivity testing is important.
How can you help?
Forget the wide uncertainty of future emissions from SRES outputs. Hone in on some reasonable scenarios based on the reality of depletion, then you will have more time to deal with what really matters, such as calthrate bubbles, cloud and water vapor feed backs, ocean acidification, other ecosystem responses and impacts on carbon cycling, landscape change and albedo, etc.
My 2 cents. Would be great if some actual climatologists would chime in here to see if this is a potential selling point.
I'll say as a Quaternary geologist/paleoclimatologist that there is a huge amount of interaction between climatology and Quaternary research. We are benefiting a lot from insights gained when the climate models are run at times in the geologic past, and they benefit from constraints on the nature and drivers of reconstructed pre-industrial climate that we can provide. I work on research projects with participants from both disciplines and am not at all unusual in that regard.
The geologists who jump up and down moaning about climatologists never listening to geologists are almost never Quaternary specialists, and often point to events tens or hundreds of millions of years ago which occurred on a wildly different planet and for which we can usually only infer the barest of information about rates of change, spatial heterogeneity, short-term variability, etc. Because it is so (relatively) recent we are able to resolve vastly more (and, more quantitative) paleoclimatic information for the Quaternary, and it is also the Quaternary which lays down the climatic ground rules for the time in which we currently live. If we're facing anything now that is without precedent in the Quaternary (which I doubt) then god help us all as it's gonna be ugly.
Regarding the question of the IPCC having used unrealistic emission scenarios, they simply used the acknowledged experts. This website exists to make the case that these experts are wrong, using some pretty convincing arguments backed up with real data, and suggests some of the motivations for the error. As a geologist I am convinced. But as a paleoclimatologist I can very much understand if climatologists are hesitant to believe the acknowledged Fossil Fuel experts are wrong just because a few websites (etc) have sprung up and are attacking them. There are dozens of high-profile websites dedicated to proving climatologists are wrong and to the lay person some of them look thousands of times more convincing than they really are.
Seems to me the best course is to keep up such pressure as is possible on the acknowledged experts (IEA etc) to get their story a bit more consistent with reality, and to continue with promulgating a general awareness that their projections are considered contentious by some informed observers.
Thank you for this post, Powelliphanta. Love to see the cross-disciplinary work.
I'm curious though, is it not the case that the anthropogenic carbon excursion is without precedent, in the Quaternary or in any other period? I've seen estimates of flood basalts that emitted something like 7 gigatons total, over several thousand years, and we do that in a single year.
Naw, the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event was bigger, and may have been caused by methane clathrates zapping off.
It's like those volcanic explosions which are more powerful than all the world's atom bombs. Nature has some big and nasty surprises to offer us.
That doesn't mean what we do is insignificant, though. It's like how me as an individual human will definitely die someday, but my diet and lifestyle choices can really hurry it along.
PETM is the granddaddy of mass extinctions, and atmospheric CO2 was around 1000ppm. But the CO2 was emitted over a period of some hundreds of thousands of years.
So what I should have asked is: isn't the rate at which we're changing atmospheric and ocean chemistry unprecedented?
I really can't say, as there is an awful lot of geological time prior to the Quaternary and we have such poor time resolution further back that our odds of picking up given transient (say a few thousand years) events are pretty low. For the Quaternary, yes chemical rate of change is almost certainly without precedent, perhaps by an order of magnitude or more.
Cool, thanks for the info.
Actually, I'll qualify that last sentence with "atmospheric." There have been some extraordinarily abrupt changes in the oceans during glacial periods, whereas all we have really done so far is tinker with the very top of the water column. Not my field though so I'll shut up before I say something silly.
It is true that the current run-up in atmospheric CO2 is well beyond any natural event in the Quaternary and most likely for some considerable time before that.
Big question is, does that forcing in itself lead to a climatic event beyond anything we see in the Quaternary? As I said, I really, really hope not - being an incurable optimist I'm hoping for something under about 2 degrees which would approximate an event we see ~129,000 years ago (although to be fair it would have been somewhat slower). Much more than that and we have to go back several hundred thousand years.
Somewhere between about 2.5 and 3.5 degrees I think we could pretty safely say it is without precedent for rapid interglacial warming in the Quaternary but we'd be talking such untold human misery that most likely no-one would care any more.
What scares me about the speed of change is applying a simple chaos pattern to it. System equilibrium is not just affected by amplitude, but also by speed. We may well be doing something to the planet it has never experienced before. If so, are we not at a huge disadvantage in trying to quantify it, having no precedent?
I really don't want to wait to find out. As I like to point out, PO might kill you, but AGW might kill everybody.
Cheers
Keep in mind that the IPCC was not chartered to do any original research or to develop and run climate models.
Their mandate is, according to their web site, "... to provide in regular intervals Assessment Reports of the state of knowledge on climate change." The produce Assessment Reports and Special Reports. The latter are directed at areas of special interest such as aviation or agriculture.
Both kinds of reports include a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). The SPMs must, by rule, be base exclusively on factual material known at the time the report was generated. It is the SPM to the 4th Assessment Report that contains the IPCC's "best estimates" of CO2 levels, temperature changes, sea level rises, etc. Those estimates all include ranges of probability. Conclusions, in both the general body of the reports and in the SPMs usually include confidence intervals.
An associate has worked on the 3rd adn 4th IPCC Assessments, the US government's climate research program and the National Academy of Science's review of climate research programs. He says that the biggest defect with the IPCC Assessments, in his opinion, is the long lead time from inception to final release. The 1st Assessment took over 5 years to complete. The 4th took over 7 years. By the time it was released in 2007 work on the 5th had already begun, yet the 5th Assessment is officially scheduled for release in 2014.
Given the amount of climate change research now being conducted and the rapidity of the observed changes, which in turn are fueling efforts to speed further research, there is no doubt that IPCC Assessments are going to continue to contain conclusions and SPMs based on research and data that has been updated and/or superseded even if that research and data were current when the final draft of the Assessment was submitted for review and final adopion (a process that takes well over a year by itself).
The long lead times are the price paid for getting a very high level of scientific consensus behind the Assessments, which in turn is needed in order to get politicians and business leaders to pay attention to the SPMs.
I suspect we are rapidly approaching the point were less meticulously detailed and consenually collaborative assessments may be needed on a more frequent basis simply to provide updated synopses of the changing state of climate change knowledge and the likely effects of the changed knowledge on prior Assessment's conclusions and SRMs.
Chris,
"It really does highlight a how this area has been ignored by climate science."
Realclimate.org has hundreds of discussions about coal and other FF reserves and effect on climate. See this one; http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=368
"Avoiding dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in CO2 emissions in the long term, something like 85% of business-as-usual averaged over the coming century. Put it this way and it sounds impossible. Another way to look at it, which doesn't seem quite as intractable, is to say that the 200 Gton C that can still be "safely" emitted is roughly equivalent to the remaining traditional reserves of oil and natural gas. We could burn those until they're gone, but declare an immediate moratorium on coal, and that would be OK, according to our defined danger limit of 2°C."
This article is saying we would have to stop burning ALL coal now if we continue to use up ALL existing oil and NG.
Too bad oil and coal reserves were not much smaller so we could have arrived at peak oil and peak coal 30 years earlier.
Neil, the coal question is the crucial point of these studies. Hansen and Karecha see coal in the traditional way, as abundant and, therefore, they see the need of artificial constraints on its use. That is the way most climatologists see things; including at realclimate, as you mention. But the other studies that I reviewed, starting with Rutledge, see market and geological constraints together putting a cap on coal extraction that would be roughly equivalent to the artificial constraints that climatologists propose. They may be wrong, but I think the point is there: it is impossible for us to burn as much coal as a certain traditional vision would have us believe. Whether that will avoid catastrophic climate change, I can't say. Surely, if we had arrived to peak oil 30 years ago the world would be much different and we would have all sorts of different problems.
Ugo - There is a need to introduce factors here that erase the poles of perspective to which your article refers, but I would like it clearly understood that I intend no offence to you in doing so.
The first class of those factors are commonly known as positive feedbacks, the earliest of which, AFAIA, was the output of disolved organic carbon [DOC] in streams from the world's peat bogs, that was first recorded as rising at around 6% p.a. in the early '60s, when airborne CO2 was at around 320ppmv.
This steady exponential increase was only recently identified as a consequence of elevated CO2, and is seen (if not controlled) as emitting a volume of carbon by 2060 equal to the entire anthro output of 2003.
Numerous other feedbacks have been initiated and are now accelerating. The obvious ones, such as drought & forest fire, ice-melt & albido loss, ocean warming & methyl clathrates' collapse, are at last getting a small fraction of the recognition that they warrant.
Other feedbacks, such as ocean acidification and annual CO2-sink capacity loss, and pernicious droughts and soils' CO2-sink capacity loss, are only just coming into public view.
Consider the outcome of putting a whole series of these feedbacks into mutual interaction, where exponent impacts on exponent which impacts on exponent which impacts on exponent, etc.
The outcome is, predictably, a mutual escalation of the various feedbacks' thruputs and a rapid (unpredicted) escalation of global warming, but such are the complexities of the organic systems they involve that the magnitude of those thruputs even one decade hence cannot be calculated.
This is the primary reason why the IPCC has yet to publish any such overall calculations -
This is not a further problem of specialization, but of the reductionist mindset itself - i.e. the standard quantitative "scientific" outlook, in which that which can be counted gets counted, while that which cannot, being qualitative in the nature of its influence, tends to get ignored.
I suggest the positive feedbacks are such a qualitative influence on out society's prospects in that they are, in US parlance, a game changer.
For instance, the renowned Dr Hansen decries the 80% GHG cut by 2050 as being nowhere near stringent enough to avoid the feedbacks' becoming wholly self-fuelling (i.e. mutually accelerating past the point of swamping the planet's annual carbon sink capacity) and calls instead for the active reduction of airbone CO2 from 387ppmv to 350ppmv to avoid that risk - yet this target itself ignores the recorded awakening of the DOC loop at 320ppmv.
Your remark above: "The other studies that I reviewed, starting with Rutledge, see market and geological constraints together putting a cap on coal extraction that would be roughly equivalent to the artificial constraints that climatologists propose." struck me as a classic item of academic impartiality - (for all it didn't identify either the "climatologists" in question or their "proposals")
when the reality is that Rutledge et al are proposing that the problem of fossil fuel emissions will be self-governing -
Such a proposal, in attempting, de facto, to undermine the rationale for a global climate treaty, is probably the most irresponsible nonsense yet printed this century.
And it is not only the feedbacks' astonishingly rapid mutual acceleration that causes me to be so blunt, for there is a second class of factors to consider, namely these researchers' wholesale assumptions that other, vast, hydrocarbon fuel reserves would somehow not be tapped in the event of a peak of conventional fossil fuels with no global climate treaty in being.
I refer of course the 2.25 billion ha.s of standing forest, the still greater area of boreal peatbogs, and the simply huge resource of seabed methyl clathrates or "gas-ice".
Given that around 20 nations already have research under way into the latter's exploitation, to assume that this resource would not be exploited in the absence of a climate treaty seems a blatantly partisan interpretation.
While I see no reason to have more faith in coal reserve data than in oil reserve data, to ignore the reality of both the looming feedbacks and the potential exploitation of additional hydrocarbon energy reserves seems to me absurd.
We face a genocidal scale of threat which the world's great scientists have attempted to document as far as they are able; for energy analysts to now promote fresh counsels of complacency surely verges on the criminally irresponsible ?
Regards,
Backstop
Hi Backstop,
I agree that "climate complacency" as a result of the screw ups of the IPCC in modeling fossil fuel reserves is irresponsible. (Though I don't believe Ugo has that intention).
The best book I have read on the myriad positive feed backs that show why a "co2 focus" is very limited is Climate Code Red by Spratt and Sutton.
It is now available from a U.S. publisher on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Code-Red-Emergency-Action/dp/1921372206
http://www.climatecodered.org/
As an evolutionary biologist I think about how megafauna go extinct and this looks like another one of those events. And I am part of a megafaunal species.
I know about positive feedbacks, yes. I chose to tone down the question in my paper because - as you say - it is qualitative rather than quantitative. So, dealing with studies which attempt to quantify emissions and temperatures, I thought that it was better to keep the discussion on things we can quantify; at least approximately.
Then, yes, we are all megafauna here. And, yes, there are gigantic sources of trapped volatile carbon out there. And, finally, there have been those events such as the PETM, paleocene-eocene thermal maximum and perhaps many others of the same kind. Put the three concepts together and things get scary. Hopefully, we are not there yet, but it is a subject that should be studied much more in depth. I think it is another consequence of these peak oil/climate studies that we should put much more effort on these non-linear effects rather than on the (mainly) linear scenarios that climatologists have been proposing so far.
Any climatologist reading all this?
Then, yes, we are all megafauna here. And, yes, there are gigantic sources of trapped volatile carbon out there. And, finally, there have been those events such as the PETM, paleocene-eocene thermal maximum and perhaps many others of the same kind. Put the three concepts together and things get scary. Hopefully, we are not there yet, but it is a subject that should be studied much more in depth. I think it is another consequence of these peak oil/climate studies that we should put much more effort on these non-linear effects rather than on the (mainly) linear scenarios that climatologists have been proposing so far.
Personally, I'm still skeptical of large Methane releases happening any time soon, there are some interesting measurments but we just don't have the historical data on them (i.e. what is the 'Normal' level of methane release in the Arctic?)
But as we move past the 1K warming mark, we are getting into unexplored territory, in that we can't find any similar interglacials in the past few million years.
Personally I find the fact that historical rates of sea level rise can easily exceed 1m/decade extremely worrying, because sea level rise is the absolute killer of global warming - with sufficient energy most problems of drought, heat and floods can be mitigated, but a sea level rise of 3-4m takes out so much farmland and so many cities that it's hard to see how we could cope.
As far as resource constraints go.. conventional oil and gas are not abundant enough to cause massive problems, but consider:
a) Coal, including minable resources up to 5x current prices.
b) Underground coal gasification - possibly expanding useable coal resources by an order of magnitude?
c) Tar sands/Orinico heavy oils/Possibly oil shale.
d) Unconventional natural gas.
Given all this, I would consider it possible to get CO2 levels over 700ppm, which is EOTWAWKI levels.
I think that the take home message is that when considering climate, the real, overriding challenge is to stop coal use, and for the future make sure we have alternatives available to non-conventional carbon fuels such as the above. To me that means Nuclear power, and lots of it.. and soon.
In my opinion there will be no stopping coal use in China or elsewhere. It is a fantasy. I recall discussing this issue at a Sierra Club function in the 70's. There was a saying at that time - "A true conservationist is one who is willing to freeze to death while sitting on a coal mine".
That's an awfully cynical view! China and other developing countries aren't idiots. They're fully aware of the many problems caused by coal pollution in addition to just global warming, and that's why they're very actively seekign low-carbon alternatives like nuclear and hydropower.
Indded. They are tendering right now for the world's biggest solar pv installations.
I had the opportunity to travel in China with a group of bridge players for three weeks in the fall of 2006. The most common barges on the Yangtze were carrying coal. They had to line up for the Three Gorges Dam. The electricity produced by Three Gorges was said to be only a fraction of that required by the growing metropolis of Chongging, now navigable via the Yangtze and the center of the Chinese automobile industry. The population of greater Chongging was said to be in excess of 30 million. The pollution was bad. At sunrise the sun looked like the moon. It was hot hot hot. There were miles of 60 story apartments with air conditioning units in the windows. The town is too hilly for bicycles thus cars are everywhere. Rail is limited but more is planned. Pollution was even worse in Xian where masks were commonly seen. When Maria Bartiroma returned from her first trip to Beijing she could talk of nothing but the pollution. I doubt that the Chinese people will be happy with an economic depression as a solution
As with everything based on reality, our perceptions and inferences may differ. I think you need to re-visit this opinion on China. China is acutely aware of the need to reduce the use of coal, but they cannot do it overnight. I lived in China for several years, first when it had no clue about reasons to stop coal use, then later when it woke up. Right now they are pushing alternatives heavily. Wind farms and manufacturers are growing like weeds; I have friends working on MW turbine systems that I have daily contact with. They are also pushing nuclear, solar, and others. But in the meantime, they must rely on coal. Given their command economy and political style (as distinct from the chaos of "democracy" and special interest lobbying), I'd guess that they will be way ahead of the US in alternatives in a few years.
If China can hold things together over the next few years as growth grinds to a halt, they're probably in the best position of all of us to achieve remarkable things in the realm of AGCC mitigation. A Command Economy can, if pointed in the right direction, achieve a result much faster than the lobbyist-infested psuedo-free-market system we inhabit.
This Chinese are outbuilding the entirity of Australia every three months or so. Maybe we should be offering them land to rent out for Green Energy production...
Dayahka, I notice your use of the word guess. Do you or your friends have access to any actual data regarding the percentage of energy derived from wind and solar in China as compared to coal?
I have also been studying geological events like the PETM with great interest. Take a look at this photo of a sediment core spanning the Paleocene Eocene boundary. That red clay streak (~20 cm in this core, 100+ cm in others) represents the near complete absence of foraminafera in the water column extending for several millenia. You'll see few geological epoch boundaries so clearly demarcated.
It may not be much solace, but the PETM seems to be singular in the temperature record. If subsea methane hydrates could easily be catastrophically liberated during a warming episode, one must ask why there wasn't a similar abrupt runaway around 25 Mya, when its speculated that Antarctica thawed.
sea level rise is the absolute killer of global warming
I understand why climate advocates have pushed sea-level rise in their accounts: its easy to understand, corresponds to current disasters, and makes for very visual presentations. But I don't think its the killer, this century at least.
What is the killer (IMHO): drought. The major effect of warming on precipitation patterns is to shift the Hadley cells polewards. Rainfall shifts from current day sub-tropical breadbaskets in India, the European Mediterranean, the American great plains, further north.
A 1m sea-rise arising from a 2^C temperature rise would indeed be dire in a number of low-lying places (Bangladesh, certainly). The same 2^C is expected to reduce agricultural yields in India by 25% (source 2007 Gwynne Dyer lecture), from irrigation shortfalls alone. I don't know if germination failures or crop wilting was considered as well.
This is of course taking place in most of the other breadbaskets simultaneously, so there's no exports available to for famine mitigation. The more I study this, the more I'm convinced we'll starve long before we drown.
Why so pessimistic?? Who says either of those things (drought and sea level rise) are inevitable? Call me overly optimistic, but I think there's still enough time to enact appropiate policy measures to ward off the worst of the effects of climate change. Sure, some changes will be unavoidable, but that doesn't atuomatically mean EOTWAWKI...
Oh, taking rhetorical license. I permit myself a little pessimism looking at the last 20 years of progress in the US (and also China now, though they bear a much smaller historical responsibility) with respect to coal generation & emissions.
Indeed, stories like the lead give me more hope than political solutions that we might avert a runaway greenhouse scenario. I'd like them to be true, but my reading of the Energy Watch Group coal report is that they in part extrapolated the drastic reserve reductions of Germany to other nations, and cast doubt on stated Illinois and Montana reserves.
My suspicion is that we're still high enough on the EROEI curve that we can't exclude growth in economic coal reserves yet. Who knows how well the resource base in Siberia (off the rail line) was surveyed. Illinois coal production hasn't grown largely because its high-sulfur. Montana may in fact have the 75 billion recoverable short tons the EIA asserts, waiting for the right price, even if its "only" strip mining 45 million tons a year.
But the current global R/P given by the EIA is scary enough: 164 years at the current rate. China is currently producing its reserves at a faster annual proportion than any other nation, so perhaps we'll be able to breath a bit easier having observed them peak first. But there's no indication in their planning announcements that they're slowing down yet.
Hate to sour your mood but rumor has it a little coal is buried in Alaska too, mostly up north. 'Over half the U.S. reserves' is thrown around but no numbers jumped off the dozen web pages I checked.
Pessimism and optimism are not as good as realism. Why are you optimistic? What human actions and natural phenomena do you see as supporting your optimism? (BTW, I think there are some grounds for optimism as for pessimism, but what are yours?)
Coal Peak in the US??
I read on this web-site a while back that the energy content of the coal being mined in the US (among the largest coal reserves in the world) had aleady peaked in 1998(not the tonnage or the CO2 content). This was because of a dramatic fall-off in the amount of anthracite (high quality coal) and the use of lower quality coal including (very dirty) lignite. As I recall, the article had stated that the absolute peak in tonnage of coal being mined in the US would probably peak around 2020. I believe the reason stated was that the size and width of the seams was dropping as the "good coal" was being mined first. Perhaps this would imply that peak coal is a lot closer than people have thought in the past. If peak Coal is so close in the US, perhaps there is less carbon to be emitted than people believe.
Certainly, I am among those who believe that global warming is less of a problem than the continuing availability of high quality energy. We are a tropical species and historically cold has tended to be more of a problem than heat. Perhaps being from Canada has coloured my thinking!
Ian
The problems caused by global warming, that all of the scientists from multiple disciplines, including climate science, biology, ecology, sociology, anthropology, etc... who are engaged in analysis of what is happening, tell us is that this is a very complex issue. This isn't about the personal comfort level of those who live in northern climes adapting to relatively warmer temperatures. However nice that might feel in the short term.
It is more about the accumulation of small changes cascading through very complex interconnected systems that could have irreversible and devastating consequences through the chaotic amplification of multiple tipping points which will send the currently stable natural cycles into unpredictable and wild oscillations. Maybe your future tropical Canadian paradise will be the perfect environment for new antibiotic resistant forms of malaria propagated by insecticide resistant super mosquitoes or something much worse. How about changes in the Jet stream or major ocean currents that could completely change precipitation patterns and devastate Canadian agricultural production.
To think of the issues related to climate change (global warming is but one component of this) in terms of how nice it would be for the residents of Toronto to have year round open air swimming pools in their back yards with date palms surrounding them is to show that one has spent very little time in learning about the issues involved and even less time thinking about the consequences.
Ugo, thank you for this. This kind of cross-disciplinary study is vital for understanding our energy and climate future.
Pushker Karecha and David Rutledge gave back to back presentations at the 2007 ASPO meeting in Houston. It was a Friday night session with relatively poor attendance. It was interesting to note that after the presentations and subsequent QA, there was a crowd of a dozen or so individuals surrounding Rutledge and one lone individual talking to Karecha. I believe that the papers by Rutledge and others on coal resources are of unusual importance. Have US coal resources been exaggerated?
Rutlege's results are interesting, agreed. I'd really like to see what the results will be of updated "expert" coal resource assessments (like the USGS's Gillette Field study), then we can have a better idea of whether Rutlege's stuff is actually credible. And the part about the post-session crowd isn't completely true, I was one of at least 8 or 9 people who were gathered by Karecha afterward. I also talked to Rutlege and I agree that were probably a few more people around him, but not as many as you're claiming. Regardless, it's too bad Hansen wasn't there. And for that matter, someone from the USGS or elsewhere who thinks Rutlege is way off. Woudl have probably made for a more vigorous panel discussion. Is anyone at ASPO listening? One of these days an author from the recent USGS Gillette Field assessment should be invited to the conference.
Perhaps my memory is playing tricks. I did talk to Karecha, in part curious to know his thoughts about coal supply. Before Rutledge there was a book Big Coal by Jeff Goodell. As I recall in the early part of that book there was discussion of the governmant data about coal resources. It was basically antique material. Rutledge was familiar with that chapter. Can data from the USGS be trusted? I agree that an ongoing evaluation would be of interest.
http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/pushker_aspo_US...
http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/Talk%20for%20AS...
I think the 'difficulties' associated with CCS are being greatly exaggerated here.
The easiest solution is conversion of coal into syngas and then into natural gas by methanation.
The technology is completely understood.
Natural gas has the advantage of being fairly clean in CO2 emissions when burnt for power.
By converting coal to natural gas with CCS we would basically bury 75% of the CO2 immediately at the coal/gas plant; it is not as high as 90% at a CCS electric power station but if this were the system, US CO2 emissions from electric power would be reduced by 60%.
If all US coal were converted to natural gas we wouldn't need to build new power plants at all because we have enough natural gas turbines used as backup power for central stations in the system.
We have 5500 80MW(average) gas turbine plants. If we take 2000 Twh from coal +750 Twh from natural gas the demand would be 2750Twh/440GW= 6250 hours per year operation, which is possible.
It also would allow much larger amounts of intermittent wind and solar to be used on the grid(50%?).
We could also choose more local high efficiency CHP or even home CHP electric power/hot water plants.
Coal/gas plants would be located in remote areas with sequestration sites and the gas would be pumped thru existing gas lines and some new natural gas pipelines.
The amount of natural gas for 100% replacement of coal would be about twice present natural gas consumption.
Another advantage is the fact that it is an open question as to how much natural gas we will be able to extract in North America. Coal/gas plants would greatly increase the amount of natural gas available.
Another advantage is that lots of additional oil could be extracted from fields with CO2 EOR: a billion tons of sequestered CO2 could recover at least a couple of gigabarrels of petroleum.
The downside is that we would have to double coal production to meet the new coal/gas demand.
Then it becomes a matter of increasing power efficiency which is easiest with 60% 'efficient' CHP(space heating and electricity in one gas fired unit) and supplimenting it with lots renewable solar and wind.
http://204.154.137.14/technologies/coalpower/gasification/pubs/tampa-200...
The Dakota gasification station is the model and we would need not more than four hundred hundred stations of similar size to accomplish this--many less if we improve efficiency and renewable contributions. This station currently discharges CO2 to the Weyburn oilfield in Canada.
This is the quickest way to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel electricity generation--60% CO2 reduction.
And US coal will certainly outlast US LWR nuclear plants.
Using syngas also opens lots of potential for adding biogas from a huge variety of feedstocks, as well as using gasification for waste disposal.
Compressed air energy storage would also fit in quite well with the system you described, as would solar assisted combined cycle along the lines of http://www.flagsol.com/ISCCS_tech.htm
Using fossil fuels more efficiently must be one of the wedges we use along with efficiency, high EROEI renewables and nuclear (in that order)
Yes, it would.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minebw-large.jpg
Assuming we continue our present trend where CO2 emissions are accelerating, we are very likely to see fire, or at least feel uncomfortably warm. However, when the fossil fuels run out and the feedback loops have run their course, we most certainly will see ice.
Timeframes: Fire 30-70 years, Ice 300-1000 years.
TOD is used by a variety of posters including many with scientific and technical backgrounds. I notice the word certainly in the above post and also in the 9AM post by Majorian. I have also seen the word on TAE. I often wonder if it is should be used in situations where there might be scientific disagreements?
Perhaps it's a useful marker to denote the non-scientist?
It seems to me we have three disciplines that can be fairly well separated intellectually. The first is the climate response to a specified atmospheric inventory of greenhouse gases, and landuse patterns. This is what the existing climate community does best. Then we have the potential biosphere/geosphere feedbacks from climate into greenhouse gases, which are currently highly uncertain. Thirdly we have the anthropogenic emissions scenarios, which should incorporate geology, economics, and politics. Having reasonable results for all three areas, it should be pretty straightforward to build a simple coupled model. This model need not be overly complex, perhaps as simple as climate sensitivity to various GHG, plus feedback(s) sensitivity to temperature, plus emissions. So what I am getting at is the fact that we can have three nearly independent groups working on the problem. The level of communications between these three groups need not be very large.
If such a model is developed, is there any danger that some unsophisticated individuals will confuse the model with real data?
I think the big wildcard in this is what our response to Peak Oil, Peak Coal, and Peak Gas is. If we recognize them and move to nukes/renewables, then the peaks may represent an upper limit on CO2 concentrations.
If instead we continue down the resource ladder and burn anything that remotely resembles a black rock, the peaks won't help much. If when all the black rocks are gone, we cut down every tree and burn those, and appropriate 100% of the earth's biomass to our own ends, then CO2 levels should will probably rise.
I can see a future post-peak when the entire Amazon and Congo forests are cut down and pelletized for export, and the Siberian peat is surface mined and burnt.
Thanks Ugo, this is a very useful comparison. Do you or anyone else know if Garcia planning to give more seminars on this? Her results sound interesting. It's good to know that people are starting to use more advanced modeling to study this.
Garcia's full paper should soon appear on the oil drum. I hope she will be able to present her results to a wider audience
Given the dramas with 0.6 degrees of warming the prospect of 'only' 2C of warming seems daunting. Perhaps a change of tack is needed with the powerful coal lobby. As a tradeoff for abandoning the CCS fantasy the discussion could turn to long term manageable use of coal as a premium source of easily accessed carbon. I'm not sure about coal CHP close to built up areas but there is cofiring with biomass, gasification and Fischer Tropsch. The only realistic way to get jet fuel by mid century may be via coal FT. If so very little of the remaining coal would be used in orthodox power generation by then.
I think we should aim for the IPCC recommended global caps for 2020 through to 2050 until the science is clear. Think of coal like the mineral asbestos; there's plenty in the ground but we refrain from using it.
There may be another lobby even more powerful than the coal lobby. That could be the huge numbers of farmers and others in northern climates living near coal supplies and facing peak oil, peak propane, peak wood and possible problems with electrical grids. Whether in Canada, China or the US, who will tell them that they cannot burn coal when the temperature drops below zero. I recall visiting my grandfather's Missouri farm as a small child before WWII. Coal was used for cooking and heating. It was also used routinely to heat water every Saturday for laundry and bathing.
This is, by far, the best post I have seen on TOD in a long time. I have gotten weary of many of the posts that begin in a reasonable manner and then degenerate into dogmatic doomerism or something similar, always the same people, always the same opinions.
Ugo has done us a great service in presenting a series of papers all differing and yet agreeing. Then at one point I read a note from the ever astute Gail the Actuary to the effect that "We would like to think we understand all the variables, but I don't think we really do. We need to have a little humility when looking at the issues. None of us really have all of the answers, as much as we would like to think we do."
Yes, these are vast and difficult questions and we shouldn't jump to some conclusion. This is rationality at its best.
Now for a question: Assuming either fire or ice, or both, or one then the other, it would appear that we have no exit, but I am wondering if this affects only life at the surface. Could, perhaps, some or most or all of the harsher effects of either ice or fire be avoided by moving and living underground? Certainly, geothermal energy would be easily obtained, and instead of photosynthesis we could use thermo- or chemosynthesis as is used by those sea creatures living around the thermal vents. Any views on this?
http://archaeology.about.com/b/2006/05/30/dugout-dwellings-pioneer-housi...
Dugouts were also used by some of the original pioneers in the area around my hometown in the Texas Panhandle
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/villagers/hank1/index.html
It would take a lot of effort to grow our food caverns. Potential rainfall pattern changes seem as daunting as anything.
A good overview of work so far.
However, work so far has neglected the fact that burning of fossil fuels is just around 55% of all emissions; or 28 of the 50Gt CO2e (as at 2005). The rest is agriculture/deforestation and industrial processes (mostly cement-making and release of CFCs).
Broadly-speaking, we can expect emissions due to agriculture/deforestation to increase along with population. Population is expected to top out at around 9-10 billion around 2050, which would give us a 35-50% increase in agricultural emissions, from 22 to 30-33Gt CO2e.
Now, a good chunk of the agricultural emissions is due to livestock. As a first approximation, we have two paths humanity takes - ecotopia, and business-as-usual-spiralling-down. In an ecotopia the agricultural emissions reduce a lot. In the Spiral, they reduce a bit, because with less useful agricultural land (as land is exhausted after deforestation, and with climate change destroying much current cropland, eg drought in Australia) more is devoted to lower emissions things like sorghum rather than livestock; but population rises offset this.
Population predictions could do with some scrutiny. The conclusion that population will top out around 2050 comes from assumptions about rising prosperity and education around the world. In a fossil fuel-constrained world taking the Spiral, the opposite will be true. However, in terms of food production the world will then be approaching its limits (deforestation and climate change again) so people will tend to limit their reproduction somewhat. However, it could still turn out to be greater than expected, and take till (for example) 2100 to top out at 15 billion. Again, we could expect agriculture/deforestation to be in proportion to this, so that those sectors emit more alone in 2100 than those sectors plus fossil fuel burning do today.
In addition, fossil fuel constraints could increase agriculture/deforestation emissions. If heating and cooking fossil fuels are unavailable and have not been replaced by anything else (as in the ecotopia scenario), then people will use wood. If the world is determined to keep on truckin' then more biofuel feedstock will be grown, meaning more manure on the land (and thus more nitrous oxide emissions). To keep the same food production at the same time as increasing biofuel feedstock production, more land will have to be cleared for agriculture - thus more deforestation.
Of course, just as we at some point run short of fossil fuels, so too at some point we run short of forests to cut down. To my knowledge, no-one has done a study of "peak forests", looking at the rate of removal compared to the rate of regrowth and predicting a time of constrained timber/fuel/land supply.
So the problem becomes more complex again...
What are those emissions you attribute to ag exactly?
I don't think CO2e is very useful when it comes to timeframes like 2100.
Presumably a lot of your CO2e is methane which was created from carbon recently taken out of the atmosphere by plants. In that case, the net greenhouse effect is going to be zero as soon as the transient effect caused by the relatively low concentration of methane is over. In contrast, carbon from fossil fuel (or methane from thawing permafrost and the like) is going to stay in the atmosphere for a long time.
I don't know what's the impact and atmospheric lifetime of the other stuff like nitrous oxide.
Agriculture and deforestation go together, for what I think are obvious reasons.
Agiculture alone, emissions come from
1. livestock
-- methane from farts and burps
-- carbon dioxide from same
-- nitrous oxide from manure
2. wheat etc crops
-- ammonia fertiliser breaking down into nitrous oxide
- rice crops
-- anaerobic decomposition of previous season's crop - they harvest the rice then flood the paddies to let the stumps rot in the water
3. machinery, most of which is diesel-powered
Then deforestation, as well as the cut-down trees being unable to sequester carbon, the dead logs and branches rot off into the air rather than into the soil as they would in a healthy forest. Gradually the soil gives up its carbon, too. Anyone who's lived near a forest which got clear-cut can tell you that the soil goes from being light and friable to being hard clay or soft sand - it's lost carbon.
No, on both counts.
Different greenhouse gases have different warming potentials over different timeframes. Over a century, methane is about 25 times stronger, nitrous oxide 300 times, and so on. It depends on their half-life - the time for natural processes to turn them into some other substance.
Methane has a half-life of 12 years, and turns into water and carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide has a half-life of 114 years and turns into nitrogen and oyxgen. The CFCs last for millenia.
The thing about chemical reactions is that they're not a spring. You don't press it, then when you let go it springs back to exactly where it was. You can push it one way and nothing happens, push it a little harder and it suddenly changes hugely.
In school did you ever do that crystallisation experiment? You put some salt and acid in a test tube, adding more and more, and nothing happens. Then you tap the glass and the whole thing turns into a crystal. There are a lot of reactions like that in nature.
So the methane and such give us a temporary boost of warming, we stop emitting them and the temperature drops back down, right? No. We boost the temperature, and other things happen which make it easier to boost the temperature. It's a "positive feedback loop", like when you put a microphone near its speaker at full volume and whisper into it and get a deafening squeal.
For example, as you warm water the gases dissolved in it boil off. Boil some fizzy lemonade in a pot on the stove, then taste it - no more fizz. Likewise, as we warm the world, the oceans are able to absorb less carbon dioxide, and will actually release some. Which helps the world warm more. So we warm the world with methane, the oceans release more carbon dioxide, sure the methane goes away but the new carbon dioxide is still there.
A positive feedback loop.
Lastly, even without all that, your reasoning that the methane comes from plants and it'll go back to plants therefore there's zero net effect, you've got the problem of deforestation. The plants can't suck up all our carbon dioxide if we don't let them grow.
And on balance, the world cuts down more forest than it grows each year, by about 0.2% [source. Doesn't sound like much, but it wasn't so long ago that our oil, natural gas and coal consumption were around that number, less than 1% annually of reserves. And as fossil fuel supplies become constrained, it seems reasonable to expect that absent renewable energy, people will cut down more forests.
Peak forests, as I said.
It's a very complex problem.
I'm with you on forests.
Deforestation for ag purposes is certainly an issue.
But ag as such? The emissions you list seem to fall into three groups:
-CO2 and methane created from fresh organic matter which are just recycling carbon into the atmosphere, not actually adding carbon
-emissions from fossil fuels (mainly machinery I guess) which should not be used to downplay the importance of fossil fuels
-nitrous oxide (something which I had never considered before... but how significant is it really?)
As to the effect of skewing the airborne methane/CO2 ratio, you are of course right to say that transient warming is not inconsequential.
But consider this: the planet is warming anyway, not because of current emissions but because of past emissions which have put the system in disequilibrium. Current methane emissions are going to make the warming a little bit faster but are not going to lead to temperatures that wouldn't happen a few years down the road otherwise. The oceans are going to warm and release CO2, methane or no methane. It's only once emissions from sequestrated carbon pools (coal, clathrates and whatnot) have dropped to very low levels and once the system has had enough time to come close to equilibrium that methane from agriculture and livestock will gain the potential to make a meaningful long-term impact by raising temperatures to levels that would not otherwise be attained.
Even then, as our existence clearly demonstrates, the feedback loops only lead to a hotter equilibrium, not to a runaway. Oxidize methane to very low concentrations and there will also be cooling feedbacks that bring temperatures back down (if the system was near equilibrium to start with).
As I already explained, no.
An area of forest holds in a lot of carbon, absorbs a couple of tonnes a hectare a year. Knock over that forest, and the carbon which was stored over a century or two, it comes out over the next few years. It's a mini version of us burning fossil fuels - carbon that was stored up over a long time is released in a short time.
An area of pasture will also take in quite a bit of carbon, if you let it revert to a natural state. If your beasts consume the pasture, they're consuming the carbon instead of its being put into the ground. And of course, some of it comes out in the form of methane, so it ends up causing more warming than if it'd stayed in the air as carbon dioxide - let alone than if it'd stayed in the ground.
In terms of effect, it's around 8% of all greenhouse gases we humans put into the system.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a runaway" - if you mean "Venus", then no, we're not going there. But pushing total greenhouse gas concentrations up the equivalent of 1,000ppm CO2 (285ppm before industrial revolution, 385ppm now, from memory) - which if we burn most of our fossil fuel reserves and continue with our deforestation and agricultural stuff, we could do by 2100 - might give us 10-14C warming. The last time that happened was the end of the Permian 251 million years ago, 96% of the world's species were wiped out, we had crocodiles in the Arctic, and everything from 30N to 30S was desert.
*shrug*
Really you should research this stuff yourself. I can put it in plain English, but I don't think the comments section of TOD is the place for tutorials.
I have looked at this stuff and reached different conclusions.
I think this CO2e notion is misleading and I don't think your original assertion regarding how important fossil fuels are is tenable.
I nevertheless thank you for your reasoned and instructive comments.
Well, climate, soil, and agricultural scientists disagree with your own "different conclusions". But by all means, write that paper and submit it to Nature, let's see how you go.
Links?
Links for what? Did I make any controversial factual statements?
For all your indignation about 3C not being an adequate sensitivity value, you didn't provide links to back up your assertion.
I guess your indignation is based on a misunderstanding because the consensus value has been at 3C or under for decades.
Same deal for your pal Kiashu who's got the gall to pull an argument from authority at me after talking about 10-14C of warming, in the 21st century no less: I promise I'll publish my grounds for disagreeing with a guy on the web in Nature when you get your 10-14C in!
You two come off much like the poster who claims scientists believe it's all about the sun because kooky conspiracy websites say so.
Pretty much everything.
C3 <><>has been<><> the concensus... thus we should ignore new evidence.
Farming is CO2 neutral... except when it ain't, which is all the time with typical ag. There are types that are pretty good at neutral or even being sinks, but industrial ag is absolutely a CO2 source.
Etc.
So, yeah, pretty much everything you've said is bollocks.
The lack of links provided is both noted and expected.
It's not an argument from authority. You've challenged the work of tens of thousands of scientists, I'm asking you to back up that challenge with a well-written, thoroughly-researched article to some magazine which will vigorously check it for any nonsense. I'm not arguing they're right, I'm arguing that if they're wrong you should hurry up and tell them. Until you do, well I'll stick with the ones who have actually made the effort.
Rather than argument from authority, it's argument from effort. Amazingly, if you someone just says, "well I just think it's so," I don't accept that immediately. I look for well-reasoned arguments with evidence.
Ante up and kick in, or lay down your cards and walk away from the table. Otherwise, stick to surfing for porn online. Dramatic statements with no backup is just another kind of masturbation. Now, there's nothing wrong with masturbation, it's healthy and fun. But we don't want to watch, thanks very much, keep it in private.
You want to doubt tens of thousands of people who've worked on it for years, well that's an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary proof. If I believed in abiotic oil against the evidence of thousands of oil geologists, well then I wouldn't get away with just saying I didn't believe them, Exiled Scot and Mearns and the rest would be saying, "put up or shut up, give us the evidence or stop trolling us." And rightly so.
Ante up and kick in, or lay down your cards and walk away from the table.
I'm not going to play games with you but I'll say this much: I'm not aware I'm questioning anyone's work, just conclusions you draw from work I'm willing to assume actually exists. I didn't just say "I think you're wrong" and I certainly didn't ask you to accept anything.
You've stopped addressing what I said after your first reply (but thanks for the tidbit on nitrous oxide anyway) so I don't know what your issue is. In any case, tens of thousands of scientists didn't show what you claim and you know it: that's just BS. Cookie-cutter deniers also claim that any number of scientists agree with them. What good does it do?
Frankly, I'm glad I'm neither a policy-maker having to deal with all this, nor a Scientist having to figure it all out in the first place.
I am a skeptic, in the sense that I try to look past the headline. I am convinced of the Science behind AGCC. I respect genuine skeptics who are not yet convinced, but have no time for the Deniers, who, imo, aren't living in the real world. I am further convinced that AGCC is the preeminent threat to Human Civilisation (such as it is). Peak Fossil Fuels is a short-term problem, AGCC is a long-term one. There's even bigger problems like Bolide Impacts and hostile Aliens to think about, but they can be dealt with by a small amount of money and plenty of warning (Skywatch), or are so remote as can be safely ignored (Aliens).
Hell, Peak Fossil Fuels may even help solve part of the AGCC problem for us, by culling large numbers of the herd.
I am also convinced of the science behind (near-term) Peak Fossil Fuels. It should be obvious that a finite resource will run short, but some people refuse to entertain the idea. That we could begin to run short in just a few years (or even now) is to horrible for them to think about.
I have my doubts that Fossil Fuels by themselves are sufficient to push us past dangerous climatic tipping points (500ppm is still way, way too high, imo). The feedbacks are the danger. We can't directly control the feedbacks, and there's a significant amount already 'fixed' into the system. So we have to focus on what we can achieve in the future.
If the more dire predictions of AGCC are correct, then we have to move right now on mitigation and adaptation. No more debating the relative merits of a 5% cut locally in a growing population versus 25% overseas cut in a shrinking population. No more kowtowing to SIGs like the Coal Lobby. No more ETS exemptions for 'vital industries'. Just get on with it. Stop building roads (encouraging private vehicle use), and start rebuilding the rail networks. Install Trams and Light Rail, instead of more car parking spaces. Retool automotive plants for Wind Turbine, Aqua Turbine, CSP, Solar PV, and Geothermal manufacture. Construct water pipelines. Recycle sewerage. Heavily promote Birth Control and Family Planning.
If the more dire predictions aren't going to come to pass, either because the models are flawed, or Fossil Fuels aren't in the required quantity, or Feedbacks aren't big enough, then at worst, all we've done is waste a bit of money, and given ourselves a cleaner Energy production infrastructure. At best, we've avoided Peak Everything, weaned ourselves off products from countries that may not like us very much, and improved the Balance of Payments.
Mitigating and Adapting to AGCC also helps us Mitigate and Adapt to Peak Everything. No one has to lose, if they're smart. It's like an Insurance Policy; we've let it lapse far too often, and the Premiums are now due.
My own take on Anthropogenic CC. Humans produce ca. 20 mol (900g , 450L) of CO2/day
through Respiration. There are an estimated 6.7 x 10^9 people. For a year:
0.9x6.7x10^9x365 = 2.2 x 10^9 tonne. (2.2Gt). I would imagine this figure has been calculated elsewhere.
No problem, as a diver who worked on oil rigs back in the day, we used rebreathers with sodasorb to scrub the CO2 out of our breathing mix, though this was partly due to wanting to recycle expensive Helium. So all we need to do is produce about 7.5 billion of these devices and hand them out to everyone on the planet so they can scrub their exhalations and no longer release the CO2 into the atmosphere. Then we can continue to burn all the fossil fuel our little hearts desire.
Oh shit, just did back of the envelope calculation for all the other biological processes that also produce CO2 and methane...not good! let's see how can we use nano technology to give every termite a miniature scrubber? Hmm maybe some kind of device to collect cow farts? Then again maybe we could put some of those idle nukes around the world to use and do some culling.
What about a bit of genetic engineering in the cow's digestive system such that
the CH4 is converted to CH3OH and used as a fuel. Alternatively, stick one on the back of your SUV with a tube up its bum. The other end could go straight to a storage tank. Who said biofuels had no future?
Hmm, maybe you are on to something there. Link
Well to summarize :
The good new is that temperature increase will be less than worse case scenarie
The bad new is : you will have both the peak oil and the climate change
I agree that they forget non energy fossil related greenhouse gas emissions in their analysis
Also don't forget that we should already be heading toward the next ice age a few 1000 years from now, AGW might not be that bad after all...just kidding.
Still it would be foolish just to rely on fossil fuel depletion to limit temperature increase because of AGW, there is big a uncertainty in the peaking of fossil energy especially coal and natural gas. We might have pleateau much longer than we think once the oil reach 200$ tehy will be extracty even the worse bituminen whatever the EROI.
There are actually people, who argue that without the advent of human agriculture we would have entered another ice age 4000 to 5000 years ago, for what it's worth.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001838.html
Nuclear fission and fusion, renewables, efficiency savings and lithium ion car batteries could greatly change the picture where fossil fuel use is concerned meaning that the worst bitumen is not worth the effort.
If IPCC don't acknowledge peak FF then they are not the prophets to lead us out of the wilderness. I was a bit irritated by a TV interview last year with their head guy (Pachauri?). He said CCS would save us and India was entitled to burn more coal. The interviewer should have asked where in the world was CCS a repeatable commercial success and was India entitled to more than a billion population.
As a result of the crossfire over the timing, adequacy and administration of Australia's 2010 emissions trading scheme there will be a Senate enquiry. Indications are Big Coal will front the Senate and demand that the ETS be postponed indefinitely. It would be strange if Australia's representatives on the IPCC then fronted the Senate and also assumed there was another 100 years of coal. Then the blogs (like TOD) would say there's not that much coal and the whole discussion would degenerate into farce. Therefore IPCC must get its story straight immediately.
Likewise, here on TOD we have a few article-writers and prominent posters who don't acknowledge human-caused climate change.
It's as I've said before, when you get specialised enough you become unable to acknowledge more than one problem at once - the problem exclusion principle.
That's what we have public debate and elected representatives for - since the specialists get their noses too far down into their specialty to see out of it.
Indeed, the hyperspecialism that reductionist science has delivered (in general) is a serious problem. I'd argue we need more generalists in the scientific community.
I'm not too worried. As I said, I think it's the place of a citizen in a democracy to be that generalist. That's why we have free choices about things.
It's like if I'm overweight and get sick a lot, the nutritionist will tell me it's my diet, the personal trainer will tell me I need to go for a run, the doctor will say it's my hormones and offer me a pill, and the psychologist will tell me it's a self-esteem issue. Some of them will scorn the others as ignorant charlatans.
It's up to me to pick and choose from those specialists, and come up with a sensible consensus sort of thing to do.
Going from the individual to the state, country or world, we have free speech, public debate and so on - all of which help us find our way to making a sort of consensus stew of all those expert opinions. They give us the pieces of the puzzle, it's up to us to put together the big picture - even if some of them say their small piece is the whole picture.
But let's look at what the supposed energy experts are telling them.
Full release published on Friday (the 13th...)
Thank you Ugo. Certainly brought me up to speed. As a juvinile oiler (just had my 2nd birthday), I am astounded by the short period of time in which this area of resource management has been studied!
Buried deep in the Brundtland Report from Our Common Future is the Precautionary Principle. If there are any doubts on how we should behave toward 'Peak everything'(definately my buzzword of the year so far) I recommend a review of this almost forgotten relic of the 1980's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_Principle
NOTE: I avoided this posting by Bardi for a reason: I knew what it would say. If I can suss out a bias will be present before even reading a post, the author justmight have some reflecting to do.
On to the body blows:
1. Rutledges work has not been peer reviewed.
2. Rutledge is neither a geologist nor a climate scientist. (Until and unless his work survives peer review, we must assume he's not qualified. His conclusions support this assumption.)
3. The authors have a seemingly too-cozy relationship with Rutledge. There is no critical analysis of his work on their part.
4. MAGICC isn't. The sensitivity used in it, among other things, allows the ridiculous conclusions Ugo comes to and for which Mearns so happily massages his back with big hearty slaps. Justifying this by saying it's OK to use an out-of-date, inadequate tool because someone else did four years ago is abominable. All the more so since the IPCC report was obsolete before it was published.
5. The use of MAGICC was torn to shreds in the Mearns post. Bardi does not address this, but accepts an extremely conservative sensitivity. Why? What gives, Ugo?
6. Mearns previous posting was shredded thoroughly. Using as support for this paper is questionable, at best.
7. ALL of the papers cited are supposedly of the same conclusion as this post. Why does the author not directly, rather than by mere aside, address the weaknesses of this paper as exposed when juxtaposed with more scientific, peer-reviewed work?
8. The author studiously avoids the HUGE explosion in methane concerns since last summer. He mentions not at all that methane is now rising exceptionally quickly. Yes, lip service is paid in a brush-off comment at the end, but this comes off as a cynical attempt to paint the writer as balanced and open minded. The brush-off itself proves the lie, does it not? When there is double the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere locked in the permafrost, how can Bardi do this and expect to be taken seriously? The agenda - PO is more important than climate change - is clear. And sad.
This constant competition in the minds of some POers - namely Mearns, Bardi, de Sousa - is a dangerous and, frankly, ridiculous. Mearns states in comments above that the concern for AGW has caused policy that will prevent him from having his post-PO BAU life. (Yes, I paraphrase, but accurately.) This is so important to the man that even after his own work is shredded to the point of being unrecognizable, he persists, showing up here to heap praise on Bardi for making the same intentional choices - those that ensure a foregone conclusion - as he made. Namely, relying on a non-peer-reviewed paper from a non-climate scientists using a climate sensitivity that is ridiculous. Even if we accept for argument's sake that Rutledge's work is correct in terms of the amount of coal that can be dug up and used, the true lynchpin of both the Mearns post and the post above is the obviously intentionally chosen MAGICC software.
One may as well ask a call girl if you one is the best lover in the world. Garbage in, garbage out.
8. Bardi also ignores the crush of reports, interviews and research indicating the increase in the pace of change in AGW. How is this even possible if Bardi expects to be his work to be seen as anything other than self-serving? With not another ounce of carbon added to the atmosphere the effects of the carbon already in the atmosphere will be increasing for at least 1,000 years into the future. This according to a recent peer reviewed paper from climate scientists.
9. Point #8 is further reinforced by a simple observation: neither the author nor Mearns have addressed the critiques/points raised with regard to methane in the comments above.
10. LATE ADD: The author also only barely mentioned Hansen et al. WRT atmospheric CO2. This is unacceptable. The conclusions reached in this paper are built upon two things: using a cliamte sensitivity that is ridiculous and ignoring that we have already overshot WRT CO2 levels.
It is not OK to play at "balanced" when one is not. It is not OK to just say, we used MAGICC 'cause Rutledge once posted here. You have to show why 3 is OK. You have to show why 500+ CO2 is OK when 350 is considered too much. You can't JUST mention it. It's not honest.
Conclusion: In the two cases we have been presented with papers from TOD staff/contributors there has been a common theme: biased use of tools and assumptions that are going to give the answer sought.
If the authors of the two works wish to be thought of as unbiased and intellectually honest, they will need to revisit their work with the assumptions of the climate science community rather than Dave Rutledge. They will have to use a climate sensitivity that does not predate the present by more than 4 years. They will have to leave their bias against AGW activism at the door.
That last comment is the most germane for that failing is the most egregious. The authors are setting up a win/lose choice between climate and PO. This is absolutely unnecessary and is dangerous in the extreme. The two issues are intimately intertwined. By juxtaposing them in the way they have, the authors in question are asking people to choose one or the other. The solutions that address both are the solutions that have a chance to mitigate disaster that we may not recover from. Solutions that address only one doom us all.
Being so married to a cause that we belittle and undermine a cause that is equally, if not more, important AND that can very effectively be joined to solve BOTH problems is something these authors need to consider deeply. Such deeply held biases are difficult to over come, but they are too dangerous not to.
I wish you luck, gentlemen.
If time allows I will expand this to include links and quotes.
Cheers for your efforts, jeers for your debilitating biases.
From what I remember of Rutledge's work his argument was that the massive resources required to fund policies like CCS are unlikely to make much difference in the long run given the effects of peak oil, gas and coal and would be much better spent developing renewables such as solar power. If the solutions to the two major problems facing humanity require different remedies having policy decisions being made on a set of flawed assumptions as to which is the more pressing issue could have very damaging consequences for humanity.
Bardi and you have set up a false conflict by ignoring current science and the follow on affects of new discoveries WRT AGW.
The consensus now among climate scientists is that we have run out of time. AGW is progressing so fast an emergency meeting has been called to address the breathtaking speed of AGW.
The logic flowing from this is obvious, but let me be obvious, if I must: CCS is dead in the water because nobody in their right mind is going to suggest sitting on our asses for the next few decades while they figure out CCS.
The entire justification for Bardi's presentation here is melting away right before your eyes. The calls for action coming out of the coming conference will be loud and strident, I'd wager. And, again, they most certainly will not suggest waiting to see if CCS can be successfully developed and deployed before taking action.
Cheers
That's what you would like to be the case but in reality, AGW is not progressing all that quickly at the moment. Despite the inexorable rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, there has been no significant increase in the mean global surface temperatures over the last decade or so. Most governments are currently paying little more than lip service to their Kyoto commitments so CCS is still very much in play in policy terms.
Just saw Professor Katherine Richardson interviewed on the BBC about this very point. She says stand by for the imminent release of very important new data showing that global warming continues on track.
http://climatecongress.ku.dk/speakers/professorkatherinerichardson_bio.pdf
Is there any real need for us to refute something that three minutes of google could demolish?
ccpo, I think you are reading too much into Ugo's article. It isn't a review of climate science, sensitivity, methane emissions etc. It is a review of recent literature on fossil fuel reserves and their impact on CO2 emissions.
You are reading too much into it when you say "The conclusions reached in this paper are built upon two things: using a cliamte sensitivity that is ridiculous and ignoring that we have already overshot WRT CO2 levels." Ugo's conclusions have nothing to do with sensitivity or CO2 overshoot. He concludes:
If you have some literature that argues how concentrations can reach ~1000 ppm by the end of the century, by all means bring it to the discussion.
If you're going to start of with fantasy, what's the point of trying to discuss anything with you? That comment isn't in the realm of reality.
And that is a blatant lie. Bardi's wishful thinking and nothing more.
Sure. If you think pigs will fly. The consensus, if there is one - and, again, Bardi's claim is demonstrably false - centers around Hansen and 350, not Bardi and 450 - 650. Methane is not geological constraint? 6c climate sensitivity isn't a geological constraint? Where does Bardi justify simply dismissing Hansen? Note that he doesn't. The reason is simple: this entire paper, in the end, is nothing but argumentation by assertion.
Assertion 1: Hansen is full of crap.
Assertion 2: In Rutledge we trust! (Why?) Because!
Assertion 3: Screw 350, it's 450+ all the way! Yeeeee-haw!
Assertion 4: It's a CONCENSUS! (Really? How many thousands of climate scientists agree with you?) I said, it's a CONSENSUS!
Assertion 5: MAGICC is magic! If it's good enough for the IPCC, it's good enough for me! (Even though it's essential assumption is wrong?) YUP! (So, why did you choose 3 instead of 6?) It's MAGICC! (But the MAGICC website has this to say, "The... 90% confidence interval values for the climate sensitivity have been updated to... 1.5-6.0°C (previously 1.5-4.5°C).". 90% seems pretty good to me, so why did you run it with 3C?) It's MAGICC!!!! And, well, ermm... I've got a WEEE bit of preconceived notion of what I want MAGICC to say...
Etc.
Here's some more, just for fun.
Neat trick! Where's my cherry picker! Ah! There it is!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090214/sc_afp/usclimatewarming_20090214150716
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0904/fig_tab/climate.2009.24_F1.html
Color me perplexed!! How did Ugo miss that! Nah... couldn't be because he wanted to, could it?
Or this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/08/climate-change-flooding
Remember! There's not enough CO2 in the air, and won't be! PARTY ON!!! BURN IT ALL!!!!
This crap is utter insanity. Here we are with clathrates melting at just 385 ppm, and Bardi thinks everything will be just swell at 450+? The latest out of Antarctica is the CONTINENT is melting, not just the peninsula, but everything will be just fine if we burn ALL oil and coal?
Forgive me if I indulge in a little primal scream and yell
PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!
Dear ccpo,
I share most of your concerns about the threat of climate change and have interviewed people on my radio show stating the need to go below 350 ppm (probably more like 300 is required). And I really appreciate how well you follow the science news and source your arguments.
On the other hand, I know that Ugo is not a denier by any means. He is quite impressed with the sophistication of climate models, does not believe in "party on" or BAU, etc. So you are attacking someone who shares much of your views.
This piece was meant to review a particular segment of a slowly growing body of study. Some authors of this kind of work take their results to mean what I agree they shouldn't, but other authors are more careful and don't extend their conclusions beyond their proper scope.
If done properly, I believe this research can help climate scientists to NOT waste time with fanciful emissions scenarios. By incorporating limits, climate models can reduce the uncertainty in emissions and do a better job in studying impacts of key processes, such as rates of methane release that have high uncertainty.
Jason,
I make my living dealing with how people use language. I am very, very good at sussing out what's between the lines, though not infallible by any means.
You'll have to overlook some of the hyperbole and look at my concrete observations: Choosing 3C is indefensible. Everything in that paper lies on that choice. The whole thing. Other language in the paper tends to emphasis the negatives of reducing carbon rather strongly while using language that is either neutral or positive otherwise. This is clear bias, imnsho.
You said:
Elsewhere I have demonstrated how his language and choice of parameters belie this.
I invite Ugo to respond to the following:
1. In this paper I see a bias towards believing PO is a more important, or at least more imminent, threat than AGW. Is this a correct statement?
2. Nothing in the recent literature I am aware of supports the use of 3C. Therefore, I have concluded the choice was influenced by your bias towards PO. Please defend the use of 3C when MAGICC is able to model up to 6C, as well as not using a range of sensitivties.
3. You make a comment, for example, that even KYOTO might not be necessary. How does such an irresponsible comment not indicate bias?
I am not an egotistical person. I am as quick to acknowledge my faults as any small strengths I might have. I am not above apologizing to Ugo should it be warranted.I'm fairly confident an honest response by Ugo to the above will not result in the need for an apology.
I'll even apologize now for the zeal of my rhetoric. I could have toned it down and asked for clarifications first.
Cheers
I too have issues with "the zeal of your rhetoric". But that's not very important.
What is important is that you're arguing from a clearly laid-out premise... and neither is Ugo.
What risks are or aren't acceptable when it comes to climate change is ultimately a judgment call. Ideally this judgment should be informed by the science but it ultimately rests on value judgments. So I don't think it's appropriate to call people insane just because they have a markedly different outlook than yours.
For example, I would vehemently disagree about Ugo's conclusion regarding CO2 sequestration but it's hopefully not because either of us is insane. I simply happen not to value the competing uses of the resources that would be used for sequestration very much... or at least I'm guessing I don't because Ugo did not say why he thinks these resources are so precious. Do you know what he's pitting against sequestration in the competition for resources?
The pitfalls of sloppy debating also strike when it comes to the sensitivity issues. There are different kinds of sensitivity. 3C strikes me as a sensible value for the Charney sensitivity but not as a sensible value for the warming expected from a doubling of CO2 from now (the chief difference being the ice/albedo issue).
But I'll readily admit to not following the litterature... have there been any groundbreaking advances since the following was posted?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/the-certainty-of-u...
HFAT,
You could have picked on lots of things that might have been germane, but confusing the use of insane as a literal reference rather than hyperbolic isn't one of them.
Cheers
Rest assured I wasn't confusing.
I would have thought I raised more important issues than semantics. Never mind.
Woh there ccpo! Your comments are misplaced in this discussion. You seem to have got the wrong end of the stick here. I repeat, this is a review of recent literature on fossil fuel reserves and their impact on CO2 emissions, no more. Seriously, it isn't any more than that.
You mention Hansen's 350 and claim Ugo's dismissed him. This absolutely is not the case. You are comparing apples with oranges. Hansen's 350 is what he says the concentration should be constrained to. Ugo's 450 to 600 ppm is what he found the the literature on fossil fuel reserves suggests could occur. I hope you can recognise the difference.
Your links showing fast emission rise from 2000 to 2007, showing methane increases in 2007 and the Guardian's sea level article are simply not part of this literature review on fossil fuel reserves and their impact on CO2 emissions.
Please recognise that Ugo absolutely does not say "everything will be just swell at 450+". Our contributors do not diverse to be misquoted like this.
Disagree, Chris. You're looking at what he said, I'm looking at how and why. None of your points respond to my critiques.
Cheers
Of course I'm looking at what he said. We all should be.
You have your ideas about Ugo's "how and why" but they are only your ideas. I expect yours and Ugo's views on climate change are not wildly apart and he should not be criticised for a literature review covering one narrow aspect. We must keep this discussion civil, there is never any excuse for personal attacks.
If my points have not addressed your critiques it is only because your critiques are not directly relevant to the paper at hand. There are limits to the scope of this discussion!
The IPCC 2007 review told us,
In 2004 global emissions were some 14Gt. However, only 57% or about 8GtC were from burning fossil fuels, 6GtC were from agriculture, deforestation, cement-making and a few little things like CFCs. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow and managed to stabilise the rest, that gives us 6Gt C annually, or 451 Gt by 2100. This gives us 450ppm.
A more reasonable scenario is that between peak fossil fuels and our economic mess, fossil fuel use is more or less static for the next decade, and then both peaking and some sort of environmental concerns have it decline by 5% annually. Thus from FF we emit 157GtC by 2050, and 178GtC by 2100.
Meanwhile the non-FF is also static for a decade (people must still eat, but they eat less meat, balanced by a growing population), and after the peaking decade it rises in proportion to population, around 2% to 2050 - less livestock is grown, but more forests are cut down as impoverished countries seek to feed themselves, cook and heat (see for example Haiti). After 2050 with population declining (due to improvement in lifestyles for the Third World, or famine and voluntary birth control, combined with quite simply running out of forests to cut down), the non-FF portion declines again, let's say by 5% a year like the FF. This gives us non-FF contributions of 433Gt by 2050, and 693Gt by 2100.
Together, they make 693GtC cumulative emissions by 2100. This is short of the 1,000ppm score, but well beyond the 450ppm one. If fossil fuels are burned more thoroughly than suggested in this sketch, we could easily pop 1,000ppm.
My feeling is that just as recessions drop emissions, so too will climate change effects, simply by disrupting our lives and economy. I mean, New Orleans' emissions dropped after Hurricane Katrina, didn't they? Lack of fresh water, for example, could restrict fossil fuel-fired electricity generation more than peaking.
This sort of thing isn't going to make things easy for us, obviously - but will probably stop us hitting the 1,000ppm 6-degree hell world.
Ccpo, you are reading too much in my little piece. It was made with the intent of pointing out a few things, not as a treatise of climate science. I wish you good luck, too.
No, Ugo, you are minimizing your actions. It is utterly irresponsible to say things like the following:
We don't know yet, but it is starting to appear clear that geology is placing a major constraint on anthropogenic CO2 emissions and, therefore, on global warming.
You can only get away with it by doing what I have already said: pretending reality doesn't exist. By seeming to be openminded with the various caveats, you give an impression that is not supported by the science. This is what AGW denialists and minimizers do: they attempt to sow doubt by asserting things really aren't that bad.
Of course, the problem is, they *are* that bad. For chrissake, man! You actually say even Kyoto might go further than we need to go! Whatever drugs you are on while BOTH the arctic and Antarctic are melting, permafrost is thawing and marine clathrates are bubbling up, we should all be so lucky.
Then there is this little beauty:
A more irresponsible comment I've never seen. Let's sow a little more ambiguity, shall we? Let's tear this apart:
1. Decline (not depletion, btw) will result in declining civilization if alternatives + behavioral change don't offset FF energy losses.
2. 4C+ destroys civilization. The entire middle of planet may not be habitable.
Which is the greater risk? Congrats if you said 2.
1. Peak is now. Effects are delayed by the economic collapse.
2. 350 has been overshot. It was passed about 22 years ago.
Which is more immediate? Congrats if you said 1 and 2.
Look, I call my blog A Perfect Storm Cometh for a reason. It's not about PO vs. AGW vs. Collapse, it's all three working in feedbacks to create hell on Earth for ourselves.
Your work above is highly irresponsible because you chose, with forethought, parameters that are outside the bounds of current reality. The language you choose in the paper encourages the reader to discount AGW and carbon emissions.
To wit:
We don't know yet
BUT
appear(s) clear
major constraint on global warming
Are we supposed to believe this does not reflect a bias?
Perhaps this is more simply handled: Please defend the use of 3C.
Cheers
Your comments are quite rude, so I will be brief.
"The use of MAGICC was torn to shreds in the Mearns post. Bardi does not address this, but accepts an extremely conservative sensitivity."
The use of MAGICC was not torn to shreds in the Mearns post. Tom Wigley's MAGICC program was recently updated to take the IPCC 4th Assessment report into account. Tom is a highly respected member of the climate-science community, and he has done us a great service by making this program available. The program is tuned to mimic the general circulation models, which can take a very long time to run. The default sensitivity (3 degrees) is the value recommended by the IPCC, and in fact, is the same as the one recommended by the Charney committee 30 years ago. I have given many talks to climate scientists, and in my discussions with them, I find a great deal of support for 3 degree sensitivity. Jim Hansen's group is proposing that it should be higher than this, and this is being considered by the climate scientists.
"The authors have a seemingly too-cozy relationship with Rutledge."
I appreciate Ugo's putting these posts together, and he appears to be a perfect gentleman, but I have not met him.
"Rutledge is neither a geologist nor a climate scientist. (Until and unless his work survives peer review, we must assume he's not qualified. His conclusions support this assumption.)"
The topic clearly spans engineering, which is what my degrees are in, and earth science. Many people would regard an invitation to speak at the American Geophysical Union meeting as a sign of credibility. However, at The Oil Drum, we have usually let the work speak for itself, rather than attack a person's education or lack of it. My slides have recently been updated, and they can be found, with the supporting spreadsheet data, at
http://rutledge.caltech.edu/
Dave Rutledge
Excellent to see you here.
My original comments were not rude. Udo's own text was his petard. He either knowingly or subconsciously exhibits bias. (I addressed that in another post.)
Sadly, you have not addressed my central complaint: how does one justify using 3C? Any program that uses 3C as default is near useless. However, more egregious is the user choosing to use default instead of the far more relevant 4 - 6C. The software can use a 90% threshold, so why didn't Mearns and why didn't Bardi? I believe you also went with default, no? Given what Hansen, et al. and recent reports and research are showing with regard to ice melt, sea level, sensitivity, etc., it is beyond my comprehension.
When an author chooses to use a setting that does not reflect current thinking, what am I to think? I learned by the time I was out of elementary school not to trust words over actions. Bardi CHOSE 3C. Mearns and de Sousa CHOSE 3C. You are here CHOOSING to let that pass.
Again, what am I to think?
At the very least Bardi should have done multiple runs at different sensitivities to give a range of scenarios. That ONE change would have eliminated virtually all of my critiques and I might not have responded at all.
But he didn't.
His actions speak louder than his words.
WRT you meeting Ugo, I don't see the relevance. Where did his introduction to MAGICC come from? Who is on staff with Ugo? Etc.
Your invitation to present I'm sure is something to be proud of, but it does not equal peer review. And, for the record, I don't have much of an opinion about your take on the resources, it is your use of MAGICC at 3C that is the problem.
To do so and also completely leave out feedbacks, as Bardi did (despite his caveat), yet still draw conclusions makes no sense whatsoever. Those feedbacks are melting the tundra, causing methane to bubble out of the ocean, melting Arctic sea ice and are even melting inland Antarctica, according to recently published data. These observations should make an intelligent person question the use of a low sensitivity number, don't you think?
Again: why did you not address 3C?
Cheers
It seems that Professor Rutledge is using the results simply as a control. Doing a systematic Design of Experiments trial usually means that you hold something constant and then vary some other parameter. And then you change the control to extreme valuess and then vary the dependent parameter again. Often, it doesn't matter what the controls are, just so that you can see the effects.
I would not read to much into using a 3C variant versus something else. It seems as if he is trying to gauge the effect of declining fossil fuel production because of depletion alone, and how that would influence climate change.
At the risk of appearing rude, your approach seems to be 'Look at the past, production tells the story and reserve estimates are always too rosy'.
I really question your selecting of the UK coal. 1913 was their peak at 300 Mt of coal and since then 15Gt have been produced. The fact is that the UK, maritime power dependent on shipping converted their navy to oil in 1911. They developed overseas oil in Mexico, Venezuela, and Iran(to avoid the US monopoly of petroleum).
Ever since then the UK has done its best to get off coal either with the North Sea discoveries or Thatcher's hatred of the coal unions. In 1952, 4000 Londoners died of respiratory diseases from coal induced smog.
So there were plenty of reasons not to use UK coal.
Obviously, if there were no alternatives to coal a lot more coal would be mined( as it is in China and India).
This is the problem with you analysis IMHO.
You give NO context whatsoever but only trends, causes questions to arise.
You need to balance your research more with a discussion of contrary evidence.
For example, how does Energy Watch Group conclude it's study? EWG says global coal will peak in 2025.
"If one were to assume that coal is to make up for the
decreasing production of natural gas and oil in the coming
decades, a 30 percent expansion of global production would be
conceivable for the time being. This increase would have to
come primarily from Australia, China, Russia, the Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and South Africa. Afterwards, production will
remain constant, to then continually decrease after 2025. "This
brings us to a different conclusion than that of many
observers," states Zittel. "Investment in clean coal ties up a lot
of money and attention. This will primarily serve to justify the
construction of new coal-fired power stations in the coming 10
to 15 years. If later, so-called sequestration of carbon is ready
for the market, it will become irrelevant, because the emitting
power stations will already be built, and further construction
will no longer occur, due to the insufficient availability of coal."
This is their true agenda.
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Coal_5-3-...
In other words, don't invest in clean coal technology.
Based on what?
(Of course in the case of US coal using your cutdown figure of 135 Gt remaining, CCS would still make sense for the US.)
Your real point seems to be that there is not enough coal(and other fossil fuels) to cause global warming of more a degree or so, based on recent trends.
This is of course insane as the total amount of CO2 produced from fossil fuels continues to rise and it is easy to show that people will switch from one fossil fuel source(gas,oil) to another(coal) based on price and availability--see oil-poor China and India which are using coal for development.
You should be trying to prove that people will voluntarily choose not to use any fossil based energy now that natural gas and oil are poised to decline.
Good luck with that.
Majorian
All true.
But the uk still generates 40% of its electricity from coal, we just import 70% (ish) of it. The "dash fo gas" was in many people's opinions a criminal wast of our precious resources. As we write, UK Coal are drilling bore holes to assess the viability of a 40 million tonne coal seam in Nottinghamshire. Coal is far from dead in the uk, its just a question of economics and politics. With gas prices being so volatile, the economice of coal look better again.
PP
That 40M tonne is less than current UK import of coal for power generation in one year.
Do you have any estimate of the total deep-mined coal seams that might be available? Open-cast / strip mining is accounts for significant proportion of current UK production of 20Mt, but both deep-mines and open are still declining over recent years.
Dave, I enjoyed talking with you after your panel with Dr. Karecha at ASPO 2007. Good to see you on here. I agree that ccpo's commetns are rude and even off-the-mark on some facts, but there is one good point he brings up. While your results are interesting, they have been available on the web for almost a couple years now, but people like ccpo and probably many others won't find them truly credible until you publish them thru peer review. Are you going to try to do this some time? If so when?
Hi George,
When I am satisfied with the work.
Dave
Let me be sure everyone is clear, though I've said this already: I am not concerned with the coal side of the issue as I think it moot.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/23/mit-doubles-global-warming-project...
My problem is with 3C and the use of only 3C rather than a range, as in the above-discussed paper.
This is such a simple and straightforward question: Why 3C? Why only 3C?
That it hasn't been answered by Rutledge, Bardi or Mearns/de Sousa is troubling. It's not a pejorative question, it's not an insulting question, but it is a vital question.
Best Hopes for an Answer on 3C.
Cheers
Hi ccpo,
Thank you for laying down the flamethrower. It is because the issues are serious that civility is important.
"My problem is with 3C and the use of only 3C rather than a range, as in the above-discussed paper. This is such a simple and straightforward question: Why 3C?"
From my comment above: The default sensitivity (3 degrees) is the value recommended by the IPCC, and in fact, is the same as the one recommended by the Charney committee 30 years ago. I have given many talks to climate scientists, and in my discussions with them, I find a great deal of support for 3 degree sensitivity. Jim Hansen's group is proposing that it should be higher than this, and this is being considered by the climate scientists.
"Why only 3C?"
In my experience it is a lot easier to come up with an estimate than it is to come up with the error bars for the estimate. When I put curves that I calculate on a plot that give a range, I am endorsing the error bars. Having a good handle on the error bars is extremely desirable, but not having them does not stop people from talking about the problem, nor should it. By that criterion, the IPCC scenario span of 10:1 for future oil production, which is effectively no error bars at all, would have precluded publication.
In my slides, I quote the IPCC likely range for temperature sensitivity as 2.3:1. "Likely" for the IPCC means a 2/3 chance. So if people wish, they can adjust my temperature-rise plot by the appropriate factor to get the top of the IPCC range. It turns the peak from a 2 degree rise from pre-industrial times to a 3 degree rise. However, from my discussions with people in the climate community, I sense some discomfort with the error bars, and from my reading of the 4th Assessment Report, I am not comfortable with them either.
As a related comment, I have not gotten the sense from the climate scientists that I talk to that they are comfortable with even the estimates of sea level, much less the error bars. That is why I do not include a sea-level plot in my slides, even though MAGICC can calculate one. The Copenhagen presentation by Stefan Rahmstorf (which is outstanding) indicates that he may now have a good way to predict future sea level, so this may change. His approach, which involves curve fitting to past temperature and sea level history, is very much in the spirit of curve fitting at The Oil Drum.
Your earlier comment raised the issue of publication. There are several things I have been working on since my post on The Oil Drum in the summer of 2007. The first is to get an understanding of the uncertainties in the ultimate estimates. The second, related, issue is to frame the discussion in terms statisticians and financial people would be comfortable with. Hubbert linearization is wonderful for visualizing ultimates, but my experience is that the statisticians and finance people have thought more deeply about estimates and the uncertainties. The third is to connect to climate scientists. Since my talk for ASPO in Houston, I have given about 15 talks, mostly to climate scientists. The fourth is to connect to geologists. The talk for the American Geophysical Society was a start; I have an invitation to speak to the Coal Division of the American Geological Society in the fall. Finally, I should point out that it is a big job, as you would appreciate from my spreadsheets. The last serious discussion of world coal resources was by Gunter Fettweis in 1979. It is an excellent book, it is 400 pages long, and enough time has passed that the topic needs to be revisited. In the meantime, I make the slides and spreadsheets available on line because people have told me they are interesting and helpful.
For me, the paper that kicked off the discussion was Werner Zittel and Jorg Schindler's "Coal, Resources, and Future Production," under the auspices of the Energy Watch Group. This is an extremely valuable contribution, non-refereed. Werner has also been helpful to me personally, and generally to people interested in this topic. They point out major inconsistencies in coal reserve data. To give one example, The Chinese have responded only twice to the World Energy Council coal reserve surveys, in 1989 and 1992. Their responses differ by a factor of six. Does either number mean anything? China accounts for 40% of world coal production, and the Chinese have not shown any inclination to reduce production because of climate considerations. Any serious climate projection must give careful consideration to future Chinese coal production. Does a peer-reviewed paper that uses either of the World Energy Council reserve numbers have credibility simply because an editor OK'd publication?
Dave
Disagree. Civility - Political Correctness - is what has allowed there to still be a debate about AGW outside the scientific community. We shall have to agree to disagree on this point. My original post was not rude. I did not go out of my way to be polite, either. Some assertions there were perhaps too strong, and subsequent posts deserved the given apology. We shall have to agree to disagree on that, also. Onward.
I'm sorry, but that is entirely inadequate as a response. It's analogous to, "But John did it, so why not me?" It's perhaps an explanation, but not a reason. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that was adequate for your paper as it was actually written some time ago, i.e. pre-Hansen et al. For Mearns and de Sousa, well, they were following your example. Fair enough in our scenario.
But this critique was leveled at that paper, strenuously. For this to then be used in Bardi's paper means the issue of the greater sensitivity proposed by Hansen, and very much supported by the fact of accelerated AGW in the observed world, was quite simply not given much credit. I don't see how that choice can be justified by the time we get to Bardi's paper.
I recognize you were responding for your paper only.
To carry this a little further,
You know well peer-review is not a matter of editors agreeing with content, or even saying it is perfect. Peer review is simply the opportunity for peers to offer critique and/or criticism. That is its value. A paper need not be perfect, but it must make sense and be somewhat rigorous.
When you do publish your paper and it still has 3C, I think it's likely you'll be looking at critique for it. Your coal projections notwithstanding, I suspect your conclusions wrt climate will be dismissed out of hand by many.
My critique, first with Mearns and now with Bardi is not that you have not published, it was that they seemed to accept the work therein as if it had already passed peer review with little or no need for revision. That is not really appropriate without some sort of caveat. No, their papers were not intended for publication, but were posted here. Fine. But given that this site has some small degree of heft in the blogosphere and that readers will inherently assume contributors are somewhat expert, there is some responsibility to their readers. That's a long way of saying, whether they intend it or not, their opinions carry more weight than, e.g., mine.
I consider the 3C extremely conservative, particularly given the natural observations. And the literature coming out now is loaded with fear and concern. Scientists are speaking in very stark terms. Copenhagen, which you mentioned, was called precisely because of urgency. It's basically an emergency meeting. If that doesn't give enough reason to at the very least also do a few runs at higher sensitivities, what does?
Bardi, despite my comments above, is not a climate scientist and is not bound by the level of proofs that you are. He has the flexibility. As you pointed out, the issue is too important to waste time on presenting data that is already out of date. Unfortunately, that is precisely the situation the four of you have put yourselves in. (Yes, that is my opinion, but I guarantee you sensitivity is significantly higher than 3. If it weren't, it's unlikely the models would be running 100 years behind reality.) The IPCC data pre-dates 2005! Massive amounts of new data have come out since then, much of it because of the IPY.
That said, the crux of your work is the amount of carbon, so I suppose others will correct the temp issues in your work. But is that really good enough given the signals the climate is giving us? Copenhagen is happening for a reason, no?
BTW, with regard to those scientists you've spoken with, were any of them Serreze, Hansen, folks at the Met office? Anyone from the NSIDC, etc.?
I do appreciate your response. I don't find it adequate, but that is more my problem at this point than yours. It's hard for me to understand the lack of urgency in people around me. We are in some very deep doo-doo and any published work that offers a sense everything should be OK is very, very dangerous. People are far to willing to not only accept that, but embrace it.
Cheers
Hi ccpo,
I spoke at GISS, and Jim Hansen attended.
The buck stops with the editor (I was the editor for 10,000 pages of the Microwave Transactions.)
Dave
Hey,
I know Hansen has read/knows of your work as I have seen him refer to it wrt coal reserves. I didn't bookmark the reference, but he definitely referenced it. Since you didn't mention it, I assume you haven't heard from him wrt the sensitivity you used?
I'd be curious what some of the people more concerned about sensitivity and rapid climate change might say.
Cheers
Hey,
I know Hansen has read/knows of your work as I have seen him refer to it wrt coal reserves. I didn't bookmark the reference, but he definitely referenced it. Since you didn't mention it, I assume you haven't heard from him wrt the sensitivity you used?
I'd be curious what some of the people more concerned about sensitivity and rapid climate change might say.
Cheers
Indeed, that was a great presentation. It can be seen here: http://climatecongress.ku.dk/ at the end of the opening session part two. Rahmstorf's conclusion is a range of sea level rise of 75-190 cm by 2100 in contrast to AR4's 18-59 cm. I hadn't realised just how important artificial reservoirs with their water impoundment are. I looked up the paper he mentioned and it turns out we have built a lot of reservoirs and impounded about 30 mm of global sea level. When you consider when reservoirs were built, their volumes and the measured sea level rise, you see that rate of sea level rise is approximately constant. The increased rate seen in the observation over the last decade or so is largely a result of reduced reservoir construction rather than increased natural processes (thermal expansion, ice melt).
Another related point on sea level rise is that thermal expansion in the period 2003-2008 has slowed significantly, from 1.6 mm per year 1993-2003 to 0.37 mm per year over 2003-2008. The worrying point is that total observed sea level rise hasn't slowed by the same amount suggesting ice melt is accelerating to compensate.
I don't like to watch presentations on the web so could you please clarify: what does the 75-190cm number stand for? Is this a prediction for total sea level rise or some sort of update to the AR4 numbers?
These numbers are often misconstrued by denialists and alarmists so I think it's worth reminding that they "do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor do they include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking. Therefore the upper values of the ranges given are not to be considered upper bounds for sea level rise." Does Rahmstorf say if his larger value can be seen as an upper bound (with the usual disclaimers)?
Sea level rise 1990 to 2100. Agreed about the AR4 caveats. Rahmstorf takes a totally different approach, he isn't using a physics based model of thermal expansion, ice melt etc. He has a simple semi-empirical model based on equilibrium temperatures and sea levels from paleoclimate and a sea level rise model based on a linear initial phase (proportional the temperature increase) lasting for several centuries before asymptotically approaching a new equilibrium level.
It's simple and shows very good agreement with observations over the last 120 years or so when driven with the GISS temperature series. I think Rahmstorf would say this model is complete - in that there is no identified omission like ice sheet dynamics from AR4 - however that concept of 'completeness' can't really be implied to a semi-empirical model such as this.
Complete or not, it sounds like a reasonable method and a plausible number for the value which matters the most: total SLR. Hopefully people will stop quoting fanciful numbers as probable values now.
It doesn't seem to contradict any other result that I can remember (not that can remember many) but I recall (though I might remember wrong) that major public works have been planned with allowance for a lower SLR upper bound. 190 cm would be bad news for a number of islands and deltas as well obviously. If Rahmstorf's number isn't challenged, maybe it will be a wake up call.
EDIT: More on topic perhaps... do you happen to know what emissions scenario he's using?
His 75-190 cm range covers the SRES family, as did AR4's 18-59 cm range.
It's also worth noting that the top end 190 cm is in close agreement with the Pfeffer et al. paper in Science last year which considered ice flow kinematics. Basically, if all outlet glaciers flow as fast as glaciers can physically flow, we get an upper limit of 2 m rise by 2100. Based on the literature I've read it hard to see how sea level rise could exceed 2 m by 2100... but it's even harder to see how it won't continue to rise significantly beyond 2100.
Aha... so that's why you compared it to the AR4 numbers.
So, going by Rahmstorf's new numbers and taking early FF peaks for granted, 190 cm by 2100 would be highly unlikely without catastrophic carbon feebacks. At least there's that.
I don't see where that follows. Just this week the climate meeting that Rahmstorf's paper came out of says emissions are *above* the IPCC IV worst case scenario. To reach your conclusion you have to
1. ignore current emissions
2. assume only GHG emissions matter
3. that Methane emissions will not continue to increase
4. 3C is accurate.
That's a lot of assumptions. It's just my opinion, but I'd say Hansen's sensitivity is closer to correct (observed events support this), thus that even with lower emissions due to peak/economic fall, we're still heading for at least 3C warming (backed unscientifically by Hansen, etc's call for getting back to 350, thus any and all additional carbon = higher temps), that methane emissions will accelerate (the arctic was 9C above normal this past summer) as we end up with 1-2 m of SLR as being the best case scenario.
Cheers
ccpo,
Let me preface this with the fact that I could not find any of your factual positions with which to disagree. The climate situation looks very dire to me, and we are out of good options and rapidly running out of bad ones.
However, I don't think you appreciate the position TOD is in.
So yes, if there is enough recoverable fossil fuel to get us to 450 ppm CO2, I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing. However, the political reality of the moment is that there is no will to stop that fuel from being recovered and burned; the nations that don't will lose economic power to the nations that do, and the exporters don't appear to care who they sell to - even Australia, which is being ravaged by drought driven by AGW but won't give up the votes from the coal miners.
Don't blame TOD for this mess. We didn't make it, and we can't do anything about it.
There are many in the staff and contributors who disagree violently with Mann, Hansen, and the rest.
Let's hope not violently.
When you say "the rest," you mean the entire climate science community. Have these staffers selected any other scientific discipline for such strenuous disagreement?
It's funny how acknowledge human-caused climate change is political, but acknowledging peak oil is not.
It's that problem of specialisation, again. People who are specialists in one field and can't conceive of how anyone could doubt their genius become very sceptical of specialists in other areas.
We readers can't help it if some of the editorial staff are "la la la I can't hear you!" deniers.
I'm still waiting for the TOD article on abiotic oil - which has just as much scientific credibility as "it's the sun, stupid" and all the rest.
I'm still waiting for the TOD article on abiotic oil - which has just as much scientific credibility as "it's the sun, stupid" and all the rest.
Snap!
Have you ever stopped to ponder whether the reason you don't see stuff about abiotic oil on here is that there actually is a difference between the two in credibility terms? I don't think you could find somebody from NASA or an equivalent scientific body talking about abiotic oil in recent years but you can still find scientists from that sort of background talking about imminent global cooling due to solar cycles:-
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/176316-NASA-Solar-cycle-may-cause-dang...
You're liking to a mildly weird site. Latest post: "Big Brother Digest - The Fight for Liberty begins... is it too late?"
Its reference is weirder site. Latest post: "Climate ‘denial’ is now a mental disorder". It has a sidebar called "Top Posts". Here are the first three: "Kucinich Seeks To Ban Hand Guns In America", "Europeans pay big for beastiality at barnyard brothels", "Baron David de Rothschild sees a New World Order in global banking governance".
That site then links to a third weirdo site which is peddling a DVD called "Architects of Control". It has something eye-catching in the "Latest News" section. Here's the summary (I kid you not): "Based on Hyperdimensional Physics, Hoagland successfully predicted the historic results of this election almost two years ago! In this production, based on further application of this HD Model, Hoagland now presents never-before-seen clues to what America and the world may expect from this incoming, unique "Hyperdimensional Obama Administration" -- including, what Barack Obama may finally do with NASA's decades of ..."
The final link is not to NASA but to something called "Space and Science Research Center" which seems to be a poorly-run, bland denialist think-tank... somewhat of a letdown but thanks for the amazing ride!
Your other comments on this topics belie a poor understanding of the issues by the way. You might want to double-check your sources...
Can't find the January 2008 release from NASA solar scientists that the SSRC stuff referred to although I do remember reading it at the time. The argument revolves around predictions that solar cycle 25 will be very weak:-
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
Here's a scientist from Canada's National Research Council on the subject:-
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175
I'm not qualified enough in the field to have a firm opinion as to whether these solar scientists are right or not so I try to maintain an open mind. I am suspicious of people who try to browbeat their opponents into silence in science as happens all too often with AGW at the moment rather than trying to win arguments based simply on the strength of their data as happened where the abiotic oil theory was concerned.
I share your concern regarding groupthink among ACC "true believers". I've been browbeaten myself.
The point remains: your sources are shoddy. I assume IBD isn't a loony website but it's not really a credible source on climate either. At best, you can hope they're not lying outright... but they're spinning for sure!
The SSRC just uses NASA's good name to fool people into thinking their argument has merit.
The facts are that the greenhouse effect from the surging concentration of greenhouse gases swamps measured variability in solar output. This is not to say that solar output is inconsequential of course... just that the imbalance from years of burning so much fossil fuels is larger than what one can reasonably expect from solar variability. I guess unforeseen changes in the sun can't be excluded but then again the same can be said of volcanic eruptions (for instance). As ever, there are many uncertainties.
You talk about data... have you actually looked at this stuff from a quantitative perspective? I'm not a climate scientist either but this is not cutting edge by any means.
I have read both sides of the argument quite widely. My impression is that the shrill nature of the AGW camp is related to the fact that the data available based on the historical temperature record actually isn't that strong yet and computer modeling of future global climate is far from an exact science given a lot of the physics like the role of clouds is still poorly understood so they are on far from solid ground although that is the last thing they are going to admit. They feel they are on a crusade to save the planet so they see a need to project a false certainty when presenting their conclusions because they think the end justifies the means and don't trust politicians and the public to understand a more nuanced approach.
Having said that if I were making a policy decision I would do what Ugo Bardi did above and take the 3 degrees celsius increase in mean global temperature with CO2 doubling as a given because even if it is only an 80% probability or a 20% possibility at this stage doing nothing is not a sensible option. If future IPCC projections are based on unrealistic amounts of fossil fuel burning based on the geological constraints then that is clearly a factor that should be taken into account in future projections and policy decisions as Bardi points out. The main problem I see with Dave Rutledge's work is that in situ gasification of coal seams may yet make "peak coal" based on conventional mining techniques an irrelevant concept. Then there is the whole question of the possible commercial exploitation of methane clathrates. I would have thought that would be a better angle of attack than the one ccpo adopted, personally.
You're right that the historical temperature record doesn't show very much... but you're wrong in your assessment of the science. Computer modeling is used to get at the details (critical details, mind you) but the physics involved are generally well understood. The many remaining uncertainties have little bearing on the big picture, which scientists have figured out decades ago. The science is standing on the prehistorical record, on astrophysics and the data brought home by unmanned spaceflight as well as on the extensive knowledge accumulated over the years regarding the physical properties of various substances.
I hope you don't mind me asking if you have actually read decent introductory material on the actual science as opposed to puff pieces (whatever "side" they're on)...
As stated I have read both sides widely including the actual science.
...the shrill nature of the AGW camp ...
Hmm, does that make the contrarian camp the sober voice of reason?
As always, I recommend reading a college-level textbook on climate science. This one's excellent, online, and free: Principles of Planetary Climate.
You'll be pleasantly surprised to see how mature the science really is.
If in 2010 it's announced that scientists have successfully generated power from a fusion reactor would that mean people were wrong to ring the alarm bell on peak oil? No of course not because when someone tells you they have a solution, but admits they've yet to get it working (after decades of trying), the logical response is to tell them to get it working while you continue to apply yourself to the existing problem with the tools to hand.
Likewise with any possible weak solar cycle 25 (and from my reading it's not going to mean much). It's a new unforseeable factor that is not at odds with AGW Theory.
AND
If a new oilfield is unveiled that's ready to produce tomorrow and will delay peak for another decade is that any reason to stop the pressure to address peak oil? No of course not, you use the time it grants you wisely.
Likewise with AGW: Supposing solar cycle 25 is weak enough to stop GW? What happens when we're back to insolation levels of the last 40 years in solar cycle 26?
Definitely back to lurking.
True enough but there is also the cosmic ray and cloud formation angle as well, which I neglected to mention above, given my point was only that there are still serious scientists taking solar variation seriously unlike petroleum geologists with abiotic oil. Hence why one remains a talking point, while the other is in Flat Earth Society sort of territory.
...there are still serious scientists taking solar variation seriously.
Not really, because there haven't been significant trends in the solar indices since the mid-20th century; therefore, variations in solar irradiance cannot explain the observed warming trend.
People who still try to invoke sunspots (or cosmic rays) are very much in Flat Earth territory.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/ozone-holes-and-co...
Not really. Just google "abiotic oil" and you get a whole swag of believers, complaining just like the climate change deniers that everyone is oppressing them into silence and is not open to "science", and so on. [example blog, example book by an astrophysicist, google up the diamond exploration geologist Louis Hissink, he's a climate change denier and a believer in abiotic oil! etc]
You can toss out a few vaguely credible people in support of just about any wacky ideas. There are Creationist geologists, doctors who say that smoking is harmless, more doctors who say HIV doesn't cause AIDS, ex-NASA and USAF officers who tell us that an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell in 1947 and the US government has a treaty with the little grey dudes, an Israeli conspiracy knocked over the WTC buildings, and so on.
It's still all bollocks.
Or are you about to pull out the "17,000 scientists" petition, not one of whom is confirmed as actually being that person, having a degree, etc? Please do, I enjoy shooting fish in a barrel.
Back in the mid-70s the AGW dudes were the ones who were being portrayed as the quacks. Science only makes progress when there is a climate where free thinking is encouraged and prevailing orthodoxies can be questioned.
Are you about to compare yourself to Galileo? That's an old one, that is.
"You say I'm wrong but they said that about Galileo! And he was right, so therefore I... well, at least I might be right."
Most of the time when people say an idea sounds like nonsense, it turns out to be nonsense. The unrecognised genius is rather rare.
Please provide a reference to a peer-reviewed scientific article in the 1970s which talked about human-caused global warming, and which was in response described by qualified persons as "quackery" (or the polite academia equivalent will do).
Are you about to tell us that "scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s"? Nuh-uh.
In fact, scientists said in 1965 that release of CO2 from burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, possibly with significant effects by 2000. [R Revelle, W Broecker, H Craig, CD Keeling, J Smagorinsky, Restoring the Quality of our Environment: Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (The White House, Washington, DC, 1965), pp.111–133]. Please show a reference to PSAC of that time being called "quacks" (or again, any equivalent).
By all means, let's have "free thinking" and "questioning of prevailing orthodoxies". Invite Louis Hissink - a qualified and professional geologist - to write an article for TOD on abiotic oil. Come on, give it a go. It's only what you're asking of climate scientists.
Whether you like it or not AGW has not always been the prevailing orthodoxy in climate science. If it is the major climate forcing and not a minor one as some still contend it is fortunate for humanity that the climate scientists of a few decades ago were more tolerant of dissent than you appear to be assuming of course you are a climate scientist rather than some kind of environmental activist. Said my piece for now so fire away if you want the last word.
I won't get too far into this because, well, I'm not very nice about it. I've read your various assertions above and find them completely without merit. The one above, e.g., is logically flawed. Whether AGW was or was not the past orthodoxy is completely irrelevant and in no way supports anti-AGW stances.
I will offer my usual challenge, to which the the silence of your stance will be deafening: Show us the peer-reviewed science that supports an anti-AGW stance. You may not use any already-debunked "science."
Cheers
Have you even read what I have written? I am not actually anti-AGW per se. I have posted stuff above that is actually pro-AGW like the we would be in another ice age but for the advent of human agriculture hypothesis, which I think is an interesting perspective because it points out that Mother Nature doesn't always get it right from the standpoint of humanity. I do believe that more atmospheric CO2 means a higher global mean temperature, for what it's worth. I'm just not sold on the doomsday scenarios being pushed by environmental groups which are based on poorly understood feedback mechanisms. Without that the predicted warming is close to no big deal sort of territory. I find it interesting that you and others have ignored what I wrote above about the problems with Dave Rutledge's research being in situ gasification making his peak coal analyses based on Hubbert curves irrelevant and the commercial exploitation of methane clathrates being ignored. Discussion of that would actually be a lot more relevant to Ugo Bardi's analysis than the witch hunt you appear to be engaged in.
This is a quote from BBC News regarding car scrapping insentives. IMO the idea is nutts, but there you go. I have highlighted one point!
" In Germany, many who had not thought about getting a car have ventured into the car showrooms, according to Mr Staat. Some of them have bought
And more economical I suppose (sarcasm)
This is because dealers have been quick to take advantage of the situation by discounts of their own to match the government's incentive, he explains, pointing out that "you can get a Fiat for 5,000 euros, which is half the ticket price". "
Sod global warming if it keeps the car companies in business eh!
Here's the reality of the global situation, "depletion is a more immediate problem than global warming, clearly it makes no sense to waste precious resources in removing CO2 from the atmosphere."
Study the IPCC's work on Global Warming Potential (GWP):
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/w...
Carbon dioxide is a very, very minor player, especially when compared to water vapor, both by volume and by potential.
We knew one would have to show up sooner or later....
Carbon dioxide is a very, very minor player, especially when compared to water vapor, both by volume and by potential.
This claim is false. Your link doesn't mention water vapor, but you can compare in this document from the same site, page 15.
The important metric is residence time in the atmosphere, which for water vapor is a few days. For CO2, the number ranges from decades to centuries.
Webcasts from Copenhagen are available from http://climatecongress.ku.dk/
The lecture by Stefan Rahmstorf, towards the end of Opening Session Part 2 on sea level changes is particularly well worth watching.
Dear all,
thanks for all these comments. On the whole, the discussion has been very interesting although, unfortunately, with some lapses of style and tone. It happens every time one mentions politically charged issues such as climate change (also nuclear and biofuels, for instance).
Please don't make me an AGW skeptical or a denier. I am completely convinced of the science behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. In my paper, I only tried to acknowledge the quantitative uncertainties we face - also respecting other people's opinions. But if you read it carefully, you'll see that I mention the tipping point, the danger of methane hydrates, etc. And if I criticized the Kyoto protocol, it is because I think it is completely insufficient.
What I am most impressed of is the level of competency of most commenters here. The concept of "tipping point" seems to have made its way in the heads of a large number of smart and well informed people. I had thought it was more of a marginal point for some far out thinkers; instead it is there and people are very worried (and correctly so) about it. I learned a lot on this point from this discussion and also from private exchanges with Pusher Kharecha related with my post. I am now more worried about it than I was before.
So, I think we are heading towards a "tipping point" also in the discussion on climate change. So far, IPCC seems to have made an effort not to scare people too much: everything goes on linearly and gradually; it is a big problem, but we have time to take measures to solve it. But this linear approach is being challenged by two non linear phenomena: peak fuels and tipping point. The danger is coming more quickly and more dramatically than we thought.
In a sense, measures against global warming were taken because it was perceived as a relatively remote threat. Politicians could gain a few popularity points by installing double paned glasses in the city hall and having someone calculate for them how many tons of CO2 had been "saved" (maybe). But now the debate is becoming much more dramatic and these weak measures are not sufficient any more. There are good reasons to be scared, and when people are scared, reactions can be violent from both sides. I am sure that politically oriented deniers will find the new situation a good excuse to attack even more violently climate science by exploiting the inherent uncertainty in the concept of tipping point. It will not be easy to explain to people what the new situation is. And if climate starts evolving in ways that will make it clear, it may be too late. What to say? We live in interesting times (as in the ancient Chinese malediction)
Why do you say that climate change is a politically charged issue? Suggesting that people should get out of the way of a hurricane or a volcanic eruption is not ‘political’. Nor is the desire to believe that a predicted natural disaster is going to fizzle out and amount to nothing ‘political’. Casting this issue a matter of politics (and therefore beyond objective evaluation) seems to indicate a lack objectivity on your part.
It's politically-charged for the same reasons whether Iraq had WMDs or not was politically-charged.
There's a bunch of things we want to do, and the actual facts suggest we should do the opposite. We're not happy about that. So we try to argue with and warp the facts.
Ugo, thank you again and please keep up the good work.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of Copenhagen this week.
Ugo,
Thanks for the response. I find it strange you did this as an open letter when it was I who questioned your paper so directly. We'll leave my "style and tone" to the off-site world of private communications except to reiterate
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5084#comment-480767
I really do appreciate your response above, but it still doesn't square with the paper itself. I had hoped my quite calm and reasonable request above for an explanation as to why you chose 3C would get an answer. Without that, your response doesn't change the situation.
I would truly like to know why 3C was chosen when observations of real-world events support Hansen, et al's higher sensitivity. I have no idea what is involved in running a model. If it's a simple matter of changing the one parameter and letting the thing run, then I hope you would consider doing so.
Running the 6C parameter and simply posting here the results - I see no need to revise the paper just for this - could be quite illuminating. If, e.g., 6C also resulted in relatively limited CO2/temp rises, that would be quite hopeful information.
Cheers
Ugo, sorry to be so late getting into this discussion. I am not a modeller, just a fairly numerate "back of the envelop" estimator. Following is an estimate I made back in 2004, which agrees nicely with the range you find in the papers you mentioned, but didn't need a clever computer program. Since I did this, some papers have come out suggesting that actual available coal is quite lower than the number I used. Also ocean warming has stopped, at least for the last 5-6 years, which would tend to increase ocean uptake, economic slowing will lower emissions, at least for a few years, and the Arctic is now cooling, so my estimate of peak CO2 concentration is surely high, and the idea of a tipping point due to clathrate release starts to look like nonsense. Note that in the Holocene optimum temperstures were likely at least 3 degrees C warmer than now, and Siberian treelines were 200 to 300 km farther north, but ice cores show no evidence of a major methane release, and temperature estimates show no suggestion of positive feedback. Whatever the IPCC reports are, they are not science.
It will still take a few years before the faithful accept the role of the sun in GW, and realize that we are already into global cooling, and AGW will fade into obscurity. Murray
http://climateprotectioncampaign.jot.com/ScientificImperative See fig. 2
Stabilization at 450 ppm calls for peak emissions of about 11 Gt/yr in 2004.
Stabilization at 500 ppm calls for peak emissions of about 12.5 Gt/yr in 2005.
We are now in 2005, with expected emissions near 7.2 Gt/yr.
For purposes of analysis we can take:
10 Gt coal = 6.0-6.5 Gt C at world use mix. I will use 6.3
10 Gb light crude = 1 Gt C
100 Tcf NG = 1.4-1.5 Gt C. I will use 1.5
These numbers are mix dependent and other sources may give slightly different values. For instance for coal, lignite is 35% C (with very high water content), bituminous is 65% C and anthracite is 95% C. Similarly middle east NG differs somewhat from North American NG, and heavy crude differs from light crude.
Conversion factors
1 b oil has same heating value as 5000-6000 cf of NG, or 0.27 metric tones (270 kg) coal.
1 quad (quadrillion Btu, 1x10e15 Btu} = 1.055 exajoules (1x10e18 joules) = 293x10e9 kWh
1kWh = 3.6 MJ (3.6x10e6 joules)
1 tonne LNG = 53.5 kcf NG = 10-11 b Arabian light crude = 52x10e6 Btu
1 kcf NG = 1.02 Mbtu (1.02 x10e6 Btu) = 1.08 GJ (1.08x10e9 Joules )
In the USA, given the present mix:
1 Gb petroleum = 6.3 quads = 6.3 Tcf NG = 270 Mt coal
1Gt coal = 23.5 quads = 23.5 Tcf NG = 3.7 Gb petroleum
World consumption 2005: coal – 4.3 Gt, NG – 99 Tcf, petroleum – 31 Gb.
Known reserves:
Coal 1999 - 985 Gt, NG 2003 – 6800 Tcf with maybe 2000 Tcf yet to find, Petroleum (excluding tarsands and Orinoco bitumen) 2004 - 1000 Gb with 300 Gb yet to find or available from tertiary recovery. There is probably some coal yet to find. Since there is no authoritative number we can use a guess of 20% of known reserves. Yet to find and available from tertiary recovery will not delay the peak, but will slightly slow the decline.
From known reserves we have potential C of: Coal – 620 Gt, NG 102 Gt, petroleum – 100 Gt, total 822 Gt.
We have used about 25 % of original recoverable coal, 32% of NG and 50% of petroleum. Original reserve amounts then contained C as – coal 830 Gt, NG 150 Gt, and petroleum 200 Gt. To these figures we can add the yet to find and tertiary recovery, and get a total potential carbon emissions of Coal 990 Gt, NG 180 Gt and petroleum 230 Gt for a grand total from conventional fuels of 1400 Gt. To this number we must add something for bitumen and tarsands, but the recovery from these 2 sources is so slow that they will have little impact on the calculation of maximum atmospheric concentration of C. We might get to 500 Gb light crude equivalent from these sources by 2100, adding another 50 Gt for a maximum number of 1450 C.
In the real world if we follow an irresponsible “business as usual” scenario we will have petroleum peaking about 2006 at consumption of less than 32 Gb/yr, and declining at an average rate of 4%/yr, (this rate is after production from tarsands and bitumen), NG peaking by 2025 at a consumption of 145 Tcf/yr and declining at an average annual rate of at least 2.5%/yr, and coal peaking in 2050 at an average annual consumption of 8.3 Gt/yr, and declining at an average annual rate of at least 2%. Fuel emissions will then peak at about 7.5 Gt/yr in 2030, decline to 6.9 Gt/yr in 2050, 3.5 Gt/yr in 2080 and 2 Gt/yr in 2100.
Total cum. fossil fuel emissions from 2000 = 350 Gt by 2050, 490 by 2080 and 530 by 2100. With about 290 Gt C already emitted by 2000, we will have emitted 60% of reasonably available fossil fuel C by 2100. The world should be near zero emissions by 2150, with another 50 Gt total emitted for near 63% of available. With a half life of 10-12 years in the decades 2000-2050, going to 20 years in the decade 2080 and 30 years by 2100, and assuming land use continues to add 15%/yr to fuel emissions, atmospheric concentration reaches 520 ppm by 2100 and peaks at less than 550 ppm in 2150.
There are many variables that can affect the actual result, and numerous scenarios could be provided. The above is considered a pretty pessimistic relatively low probability scenario. Factors that can cause a more optimistic outcome include diminishing supplies of petroleum worldwide, and NG in North America, and use of coal to generate liquid fuel and syngas driving up the cost of fuel and forcing significant efficiencies; global warming concerns finally being recognized and forcing a degree of energy conservation; accelerated growth of nuclear and renewable alternatives to fossil fuels; and consumer demand for clean coal technology; plus a significant fraction of the CO2 being sequestered economically by tertiary oil recovery. All of these are high probability. It is also likely that, with petroleum and NG in decline early in this century, population will peak and decline earlier than projected by the UN, which in turn will have a favorable impact on the land use emissions increment. Thus the most probable result will be significantly better than the one quantified above.
On the pessimistic side export of NG as LNG and GTL could hasten the depletion of NG, with a somewhat higher and earlier peak. This could cause an acceleration of growth in coal consumption, leading to peak coal use of near 3x present annual consumption with a peak near 2040 at a maximum of 10 Gt total carbon emitted from fossil fuels. We would consume about 67% of available fuel by 2100 and 70% by 2150. Coal would then be depleted sooner, and peak ppm could be little higher, perhaps 570 ppm. However such a scenario would be even more likely to trigger the ameliorating effects noted above.
Given a general recognition that the center of the 15 micron CO2 IR absorption band is saturated, so that global warming will go up logarithmically with increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and given that the last 90 ppm concentration increase has caused +< 0.3 degrees C warming, we could expect a further increment of GG warming of < 0.2 degrees by 2050
This is utterly false. Support this.
Since it's not happening, but increased acidification is, I think not. Are you intentionally or unintentionally conflating decadal oscillations with global ocean cooling?
I can find no polite way to put this: that is an outright fabrication.
Try again. In the meantime, cite your sources.
I don't reply to trolls. Murray
It's not trolling to ask you to cite your sources.
Trolling is when you stir up argument for the sake of it. Citing your sources is just part of discussion and learning and showing that your ideas have some basis in reality.
It is the way ccpo communicates. should I have said "i don't respond to egotistical jerks"? Murray
It doesn't matter if they're egotistical jerks or not.
Either you have facts on your side, or you're just making stuff up. If you have facts on your side, present them and their sources. Otherwise...
The truth or untruth of assertions, and the validity of a challenge to those assertions, has nothing to do with the character of the person making the assertion or challenging it.
Ante up and show us your cards, or lay them down and walk away from the table. Put up or shut up.
The person challenging my assertions, and calling me a liar doesn't have to "ante up"?? Somehow I don't think I need your advice Kiashu, but I have ante'd up below anyway. Now what do you have to sya about ccpo being impolite, trollish and wrong?
I wouldn't say ocean warming has stopped but there is evidence of significant slowing in the rate of warming. In the A. Cazenave et al., 2008 review paper the rate of sea level rise due to thermal expansion is stated to have fallen from 1.6 mm/yr 1993-2003 down to just 0.37 mm/yr over the period 2003-2008.
See http://earth.esa.int/workshops/meris_aatsr2008/participants/616/pres_616... pages 11-13. Note - I said nothing about a trend, just that for the last few years we have no warming, in fact a slight cooling. Make of it what you will. Murray
Whether you like my style or not is irrelevant. How arrogant is it to dismiss other people because you just don't like them? Pot/Kettle.
On to better things. You said the "last few years" show a global ocean cooling. This is false, by the very data you present. Page 11 - 13 Global Anomaly shows warming from mid 2002 to mid-2007 with two one-data-point dips along the way to *just* below the line. There is cooling from mid-2007 to mid-2008 *only*, with a return to positive anomaly as the data heads into 2009.
Further, we know this to be due to oscillations in the Pacific. World *land* temps were well above the long term trend for 2008. Sans some overturning of deep ocean waters, 2008 would have been a good bit higher on the list of warm years.
When you take data out of context you get skewed impressions. The question is, why would you make a (false) statement without discussing the full situation?
Even worse, the conclusions state "North Atlantic appears to contribute to warming."
Warming, not cooling. This is a perfect example of cherry picking. You chose some data - one year's worth - from an entire presentation to make a false claim wrt "recent years." (Perhaps you are trying to claim pre-2002 equals recent years?) The gist of the presentation as a whole is that there is, indeed, warming.
Being angry at me is not going to change that. It's an ad hominem intended to dismiss my critiques. Good luck with that.
You also claimed the Arctic temps are falling. I refer you to the NSIDC.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/111008.html
Try again.
Thanks for the good links, this was a little easier to read than some of your more vitriolic posts. The more serious the subject matter the more style matters. That can be hard to focus on in the heat of an arguement though.
It is good to try and remember that many people are attempting to get info from all of these posts and have a hard time doing that if posters are way too intent on flaming. The readers here are by and large sharp enough to sort out disputed claims. They will have an easier time doing that when the tone is more on the civil end of the scale. Just a thought.
CCPO I hope ypu are still tuning in. You said Quote
On to better things. You said the "last few years" show a global ocean cooling. This is false, by the very data you present. Page 11 - 13 Global Anomaly shows warming from mid 2002 to mid-2007 with two one-data-point dips along the way to *just* below the line. There is cooling from mid-2007 to mid-2008 *only*, with a return to positive anomaly as the data heads into 2009 end quote
The reference I provided show a variance in degrees kelvin. A variance means a difference from a baseline. So on page 11 for example, in mid 2003 the peak was 0.16 degrees above the base line, and by Q3'o8 was .04 degrees above the base line. Assuming the baseline is unchanged, that's cooler by 0.12 degrees. A least squares fit shows a declining variance of 0.02 degrees/yr. It may still be warmer than the base line, but not as much warmer. That's cooling. You are sure quick to sling around disparagements for a guy that doesn't understand basics. Looks like you get all your AGW beliefs from RC so it's not a surprise.
The anomalous melt back in the Arctic in 2007 was due to a stationary high sitting over east Siberia and the Chukchee Sea for over a month, that kept clear skies and allowed unusual insolation, not to a surge in global warming. IN spite of thin one year ice at the end of the 2008 freeze season, meltback was 400k sq km less in 2008 than 2007. That means there was less heat content in the Arctic. Now max ice extent is back to the average of the last several years, and with much of it second year ice, there will be thicker ice. watch for another year of reduced meltback in 2009. It is cooling. This is all off topic for TOD so I'm signing off for this topic.
I hadn't heard the arctic had a five or six year cooling trend, nor have I heard to the contrary, could you cite where you found this data? I don't put a lot of stock in yearly fluctuations, twenty-two year (solar storm cycle is as reasonable a period for smoothening the tempurature curve as any) moving averages might show up trends a little better, good back of the envelope stuff anyhow.
You ask above if climatologists read this. Sure. Myself working at least with atmospheric aerosol particles and clouds.
Here some general critic, loosely connected to your question above concerning linear scenarios, hope you like it and can see opportunities for improvements of your text, so to speak:
You write "but it is starting to appear clear that geology is placing a major constraint on anthropogenic CO2 emissions and, therefore, on global warming. Here, I present a brief summary of some of the recent papers that have appeared on the subject."
This I do not agree to; it is not "appearing clear", only a few individuals ponder today on these questions; on a large timescale, (that you should define for the discussion), there is a constraint on emissions, yes, but you write "therefore, on global warming". With the current scientific knowledge today, I cannot agree, (and it seems as if many would not,) that global warming for the next say 5 generations (my suggestion, again you do not mention the timescale you like to discuss) will be "constrained" with that scenario. It is not excluded that global warming can be large (ie there could be "pain" for humans, eco-systems and or the economic system we live in) even if "anthropogenic CO2 emissions" would become small!
(Do you mean now all CO2 or only from fossil fuels, btw? Not clearly written, a scientific text can be done better!)
Thus it is risky to recommend to study "tipping points" more, then to only study the current climate, just because a few individuals suggest scenarios/models which include smaller CO2 emissions...
You further write you present papers on this, but at least a few papers that you present seem to me, to arrive to the opposite then what you describe, namely that with a constraint in CO2 emissions climate change can be at least substantial. i e Kharecha and Hansen, and Hansens 350 ppm paper, Brecha and the reply from Zecca and Chiari. I find your introduction thus not clearly describing your content.
You further write "simulations of future climate have been run without taking into account "peaking" of the major fossil fuels". I suppose you mostly mean in the IPCC. Scenarios are there defined. Not simulations. The scenarios include for example A1T which foresees use of "non-fossil energy sources", and the B1 group including "introduction of clean and resource-efficient technologies".
------
A further point you mention is that these are the only papers with both scenario/model and climate simulation, this is not very surprising, as mostly a scenario is used as input for the climate simulation, thus the two processes can be done apart.
Only if you do a new "unexpected" scenario you might need to run that yourself, as it is not mainstream. A point to think about?
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This is critical: you write "These values are far below those of the "business as usual" (bau) scenario of the IPCC that predicts a CO2 concentration of about 1000 ppm by the end of the century."
Are you talking about ppm CO2, or are you talking about CO2 equivalent ppm? This you should clearly write out. 600 ppm CO2 correspond roughly to 1000 CO2 equivalent ppm!!!
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I appreciate your final remark most: "there exist measures that will mitigate both global warming and depletion. These are energy efficiency and replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy or renewables.""we should move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible."
Lets keep up the steam to get there!
Thanks for the corrections, Segeltamp. I don't claim to be anything more than an amateur in climate science, so I could have expressed some concepts more clearly. And, of course, there are many things to think about in this field. We move on, anyway,
Nice work Ugo, congratulations! though I must admit I do not believe in AGW ... Actually it's totally irrelevant.
And besides, all these high-tech, rocket science climate models, no matter how one names them, after all, are besed on some assumptions, aren't they?
And these are invariably politically motivated...
Folks, do not worry about CO2 climate change... rather start worrying about die-off, which is maybe only few years away...
The system has collapsed...
We'll soon start kicking each other butts to get food... while nukes will probably produce something more similar to global cooling, i.e. nuclear winter.
Let's hope I am totally wrong!
And besides, all these high-tech, rocket science climate models, no matter how one names them, after all, are besed on some assumptions, aren't they?
Most denialists don't appear to understand climate models. Whether this is feigned or actual is another debate which we shall leave for now. For your edification:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/is-climate-modelli...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-mod...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/modeller-vs-modeller/
Sir, thx, because you worry for my education! If I died yesterday, I wouldn't know that!
My impression, perhaps incorrect, is that ccpo has an unusual approach to science. He seems to start from the premise that he already knows the answers. Sycophants and other Individuals who agree with him are by his definition practicing good science. They may be awarded with a "cheers" Those who disagree are evil, perhaps even that ultimate evil - a denier. They may receive "jeers". Agnostics fare no better. He does not accept the dictum attributed to Richard Feynman that: "The first duty of the true scientist is to prove himself wrong".
I am amused by the temper tantrums that produce such jewels as:
"PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!".
I cannot pass critical judgement on this particular posting since I have only a passing knowledge of the details of climate science, but there have been numerous other postings on TOD (even by quite brilliant people) which richly deserved the response “PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!” The prospect of the radical, social and political changes required to fix a fundamentally bankrupt economic model is quite capable of making cowardly deniers out of otherwise intelligent human beings.
True, but have you ever seen it in extra large bold capitalized print with an explanation point?
ccpo:
Time: March 11, 2009 - 1:31am
robert wilson: The above post.
Time: March 12, 2009 - 9:35am
The point should be obvious. Pot/Kettle. So, on to a point perhaps worth looking at as it pertains to how the debate is framed and points out why we go nowhere, or go only slowly, on AGW policy.
You said:
I am not a scientist and have never claimed to be. My approach to science is impeccable: I teach my students (Science is an excellent source of content-based language teaching.) it is all about the proper application of scientific method, objectivity, and repeatability, i.e. independent confirmation.
You are conflating science with policy. I cannot affect the science; I am not a scientist nor am I a researcher. I can affect policy (in theory) as part of the body politic at large. To interpret my comments as made by a scientist, and to hold them to that standard of rigor, is inappropriate, if not plain silly.
And you start from the premise I do not. How are the two different? More importantly, as I *have been right thus far*, I have nothing to apologize for. Even more importantly, your attempt at a dig with that comment backfires on you: you cannot show I am not right. It is entirely possible I *am* right, and judging by the massive amount of damned scary science that came out last year and this thus far, I absolutely AM right.
And don't forget what I said above: I am *able* to speak thus for I am *not* bound by the need to be careful and conservative with my statements. Sorry for the repetition, but you holding me to that standard is completely inappropriate. (Why you went on to insult others as sycophants is beyond me. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.)
But let us remain focused.
Some will be right. Many more will be mostly right, and so on and so forth. Your assumption that I am not, or should not act as if I am, is no less arrogant. Well, more so since my prognostications have been borne out thus far.
FYI: I have stated since early 2007 the IPCC numbers on SLR were far off the mark. I have stated without apology or equivocation 1M is the minimum, 2-3 quite possible and 5 would not surprise me. I invite you to look at the recent research on this and judge for yourself the veracity of my prognostications.
FYI: Beginning in Aug. '08 I responded that the report on thermokarsts were heralding a dramatic change in methane emissions. Further reports from Siberian research supports this as does the pattern of ice melt in the Arctic and the fact of higher methane in '07. (No reports on '08 methane yet.)
Thus far, on at least two fronts, I am unambiguously ahead of the pack. (You should consider joining me. It's nice up here.)
The FYI's were simply to illustrate castigating someone for a strong statement of opinion when it is so well supported is a bit argumentative, don't you think?
What you have done is what we see far too often in the climate debate and virtually any other debate: you have not only shot the messenger with your screed above, you have burned the message. I will leave it to you to ponder the import and impact of your methodology, particularly as it applies at the level of our society as a whole.
Do I need to point out that public policy is virtually always made without the comfort of 100 percent certainty of the underlying information? That the science is overwhelmingly in favor of AGW being real, being now, etc? There truly is no significant debate at the scientific level. Am I supposed to pretend there is? Am I supposed to give those who offer false claims or already-debunked science falsely equivalent weight?
Another point to bear in mind is that the denialist "machine" is well-documented. To assume a denialist isn't part of that machine is, frankly, dangerous. Perhaps you missed the recent revelation that the number of anti-AGW lobbyists has surged and is currently 8-1 over AGW lobbyists?
And when I think there is a flaw even in the thinking of someone who doesn't deny AGW, such as with Bardi, am I to not say so? My risk analysis tells me better to have to apologize for an ill-directed comment than to allow sceptics to have free reign.
Let's hope for fewer messengers shot and fewer messages burned.
Cheers