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| Global annual fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions through year 2007, in million metric tons of carbon, as reported by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/home.html. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Carbon dioxide variations over the last 400,000 years, showing a rise since the industrial revolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync.
In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig - NYTimes.com
I haven't said anything about the oil spill yet. I couldn't really decide how I felt about it. I was shocked of course. I was saddened. I was mad. But most of all I was scared.
I have accepted the reality of hydrocarbon depletion for a long time now. I don't think I have, however, fully accepted the consequences of that until now. I know that there is no way BP would have been drilling in this incredibly risky environment, a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, unless we were running out of easy places to find oil. This behavior, and others like it, is a direct result of our impending hydrocarbon depletion. But suddenly, I have come to the realization that there is a face to that risky behavior. The end of the oil age is going to be ugly.
The bottom line, of course, is that we must have our oil at any cost. We, the industrialized world in general and the United States in particular, have become so enamored of the joys that hydrocarbon consumption can bring to our lives that we will no longer tender any thoughts of an alternate approach. That is not hard to understand since we are so populous now (thanks to all that oil BTW) that we would only be able to support a fraction of our present consumption without it. So we will continue to drill. We will drill until we have nowhere else to drill and you and I will pay whatever it costs to see that it happens.
Now we know, all of a sudden, what that means. It means things like giant oil spills. Look for more of these kinds of things to happen. Look for them to happen in spite of the increased regulation and additional fortunes spent on keeping it from happening. This is where we are. The rest of the oil is out there hiding somewhere. And we are going to find it. No matter how ugly it gets.
William Kovacs, the US Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, last year famously called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate change.
As much as we need to find a way to curtail our use of hydrocarbons, this article points out why we probably will never solve our energy/climate problems. Our economy is based on the free flow of cheap energy. In a very real sense, all wealth (in modern society) can be traced back to the use of oil. The owners of that wealth, and those who stand to accrue more wealth as additional oil is burned in the future, are going to fight any efforts that might limit that oil consumption. Because these are the same people that hold all of the power cards in today’s capitalistic, free market world, I think we will not see any significant constraints placed on our use of oil.
It is too bad because all of our real problems are also related to the burning of oil. We are approaching a limit to the amount of oil that can be extracted from this old Earth’s crust and, at the same time, to the amount of residue, from burning oil, that can be absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere without critically disturbing the habitat we all depend on for life. We should be backing off in our use of oil (and other hydrocarbons by the way) in any case.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to spend our creative energy trying to devise a way of life that will not depend on oil, but rather sustainable methods, for the basics of life such as heating, transportation and food production leaving what is left of our hydrocarbon stock as a legacy to future generations. There are some things, such as medicines and plastics, that petroleum can provide that aren’t easily replaced. There are probably many other things yet to be found. It may not be possible to come up with a hydrocarbon-free alternative lifestyle that is acceptable to the vast numbers of people now living and projected to be living in the near future. We need to try, though, because the present lifestyle will certainly not be around for long.
[Link: New Scientist] "Not so, says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He argues that past episodes are a poor guide to what will happen in the future, for the simple reason that the sun is brighter now than it was then. Add that to the mix and the release of methane hydrates could lead to catastrophic, unstoppable global warming - a so-called 'Venus syndrome' that causes the oceans to boil away and dooms the Earth to the fate of its broiling neighbour."
Most conversations about Climate Change focus on the short term. What will the weather be like around here as Global Warming kicks in? This article is grappling with the bigger picture. As we pour CO2 into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, we are returning the earth to a state that hasn't been seen for millions of years. Who knows what will happen as this occurs? All of earth's systems will be effected. Much of the earth may well become uninhabitable. The good news is that we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn eventually and we won't be able to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The bad news is that when we run out of hydrocarbons to burn we will also be out of energy needed to combat the changing conditions.
"Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years,"
[BBC NEWS | Science/Nature]: "Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, writes that 'there are over one - maybe even two - million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological sustainability and social justice'.
And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement. There is no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and begin to sequester carbon dioxide.
Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The 'movement' that Hawken refers to is, he notes, 'atomised' and 'largely ignored'."
[New York Times By MICHAEL POLLAN] "There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared."
Thirty per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in ten of the world’s major rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea.
[Link:
Times Online]
When I read an article like this I realize that all life on earth, including humanity itself, is in anywhere from serious to fatal trouble. It isn't what is in the article itself that scares me though. It is the fact that an article like this can be written about the conclusions of a huge number of learned scholars in pertinent fields of study, representing the only international "governmental" body there is, and nobody, especially those who might have some chance of doing something about it, will even notice. From where will a solution to the problems we are facing come I ask myself. There is no one seeking a solution. We have the brains, certainly, to see the problem and even to imagine a solution but we don't seem to have the intellectual courage or political will to face those answers.
"The study, carried out for the Tyndall Centre, suggests that counting carbon emissions within national borders, as is currently the case under the Kyoto Protocol, may be inadequate in deciding who is responsible for emissions reduction. Fair, globalized trade might imply that a nation’s entire carbon footprint should also include imported goods and services manufactured elsewhere, the researchers suggest."
[Link: Green Car Congress]
One of these days the jig is going to be up for the United States. It is common knowledge that we have, for quite awhile now, been using an inordinate amount of the worlds oil for our own purposes. Now it looks like we are producing a lot of other people's pollution as well. It won't be possible for us to pull this off for long I'm afraid. If you follow the energy news you know that oil producers are already hedging their future commitments in favor of assuring oil supply for their own citizens. It can only be a matter of time, in this age of global accountability, until exporters of manufactured goods start refusing to accept the responsibility for the pollution associated with the manufacture of goods for other nations. The United States will have a lot of decisions to make when the global accounting books are opened to the public.
The world is blinding itself to the reality of its energy problems, ignoring the scale of growth in demand from developing countries and placing too much faith in renewable sources of power, according to two leaders of the global energy industry
[Link: Times Online]
This is very serious talk from the heads of major oil. Most of the things they are talking about are not news to anyone who has been following the oil depletion story line. Maybe not news but a little more intimidating when you consider the source.
Demand for hydrocarbon fuels will outstrip supply. Inadequate supply will not be sufficiently bolstered by renewable fuels. Attempts to deal with climate change will falter as we resort to burning coal and trying to convert it to liquids for transportation. If the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil say so it might make sense to listen.
But what do they suggest we do to tackle these problems? Are you ready for this? Reduce our consumption (otherwise known as conservation or, as they suggest, "energy efficiency"). That is really the revolutionary message in this article. I have not seen anyone of any stature in industry or politics(especially the oil industry) suggest that we actually try to consume less. Isn't consumption what makes America tick? Certainly a politician couldn't say something like that. Let's keep our eye on this trend. It could actually change things.
To turn coal into liquid fuel it must be fired up to 1,000 degrees and mixed with water. Then the gas that's created is transformed into fuel that can be used in cars and jets. Unfortunately, creating CTL, as it is known, is a very intensive process requiring coal, water and cash. To wean the United States off of just 1 million barrels of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each year. The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated at $4 billion.
[ Link: washingtonpost.com]
Does anyone notice a huge hole in this discussion of the pros and cons of coal liquification? The purpose of this new wonderful technology is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, right? Supposedly, that will help us with our national security, help fight climate change (if we handle it right) and lead the way in our response to oil depletion. The only problems are water and financing. We have all the coal we could ever want. The article does mention in passing that the process is accomplished by heating the coal up to 1000 deg. F. However, where that energy is going to come from they don't say. Natural gas? More coal? Oil? Nuclear? Whatever is going to be used to heat the coal is either going to add back to our dependence on foreign energy and/or limit the net energy from the process, isn't it? By definition we don't have any extra fuel laying around or we wouldn't be doing this. And what about all of the energy required to catch and store all of that CO2? I'm sorry but I don't see how this is going to help.
Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.
[Link: Business Week]
I will have to say that I am surprised at this reasonable opinion under the banner of a publication like Business Week. Like many recent Peak Oil discussions in the media, this article seems to be picking up on the causal relationship that Peak Oil and Climate Change enjoy. A while ago they talked about the two subjects as independent problems. Now they have started talking about the two being like two sides of the same coin. Eventually they will understand that the two problems are really just two, admittedly bad, side effects of recklessly using (AKA: releasing back to the atmosphere) the vast accumulation of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the earths crust over many millions of years. When they understand that, they will start to comprehend what a real solution looks like. Less consumption or fewer people. Almost certainly both.
As oil production fails to meet demand our climate is going to have more than coal to worry about too. Every thing that can be burned for heat or eaten will be stripped from this earth by the hydrocarbon hordes that have arisen to feed off of the cheap and plentiful oil. If it can't be burned for heat or eaten it will be stripped from the earth to make room for something that can. It won't be pretty.
Climate change and global warming has become part of our everyday life, and central to this debate is the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The fossil fuels that we use contain carbon and hydrocarbons, and in the combustion of these fuels, carbon dioxide is released along with energy.
In the present climate debate, however, the amount of available fossil fuels does not appear to be an issue. The problem, as usually perceived, is that we will use excessive amounts in the years ahead. It is not even on the map that the amount of fossil fuels required in order to bring about the feared climate changes may in fact not be available.
[Link: Kjell Aleklett - Original article translation from EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse]
Now here is a classic good news/bad news situation. The shorter version: we may not be destroyed by climate change because we may not have enough fossil fuels to do full damage to the climate. It looks like a race to the bottom doesn't it. Will we destroy our climate or our civilization first. Of course, that is a simplification. If he is right, we will be fighting what climate change there is with a much reduced tool kit so it will be a mix of both.
This should not be a surprise, because climate change and fossil fuel usage are joined at the hip. The climate is a function of how much carbon is in the atmosphere. By returning all of the carbon that was locked up in the earths crust to the atmosphere we have fiddled with that carbon balance. We are getting exactly what we bargained for. Take your pick, livable climate or 100 years of free and easy energy.
In a study released earlier this month, the scientists claim the world's 52,000 dams contribute more than 4 percent of the warming impact linked to human activities. The study even suggests that dams and reservoirs are the single largest source of human-cased methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.
[Link: Shaun McKinnon - AZCentral.com]
Well, that pretty much does it. All of this time I have been quietly patting myself on the back as I used all of my electrical tools and toys. I live in Seattle. Most of the electrical power in these parts comes from the massive Columbia hydroelectric system. No greenhouse contributions from me, I thought, as long as I keep my power usage electric. This article has torn a big hole in that construct. So much for electric cars and public transport as a way for Seattle to do its part for global warming. The more we understand the less we know it seems.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that more Americans than ever — 60%, up from 48% a decade ago — believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate. A slightly larger percentage think it will cause major or extreme changes in climate and weather during the next 50 years.
And in a reflection of the impact the environmental movement has had on Americans' attitudes in the nearly four decades since the first Earth Day celebration, most people now believe that they should take more steps as individuals — such as riding mass transit and making their homes more energy efficient — to help reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Even so, most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A majority of those surveyed in the poll, conducted March 23-25, said they wouldn't want a surcharge added to their utility bill if their homes exceeded certain energy-use levels. And most Americans would oppose any laws requiring cars sold in the USA to dramatically improve their gas mileage or restrictions on development to try to limit suburban sprawl.
[Link: USATODAY.com]
I believe in the reality of Peak Oil. I believe that the consequences of excessive oil use has permanently altered the earth's climate. I believe that there will be dire consequences for all living things resulting from the climactic superposition of these two unprecedented events. I did not participate in USA Today's poll(see link) but if I had I am not sure whether I would have answered much differently than the people who did. I am a victim of my times like everyone else. I was raised on the leading edge of the oil age and it encompasses the entirety of my world view. I have very little to work with in building a new reality. It is intellectually easy for me to say that the problem we all face is eliminating excessive consumption. It is emotionally difficult, in the extreme, to make a list of things I am willing to throw out or, in a way even worse, things that I will newly adopt to take the place of the things that I have thrown out. I am retired. A lot of my reticence can probably be attributed to the fact that I fit the "old horse not being able to learn new tricks" model. But not all of it. The oil age is a pretty strong addiction.
Looming just over the horizon are four great storms that soon will have a major impact on nearly all the world’s peoples and their descendents for decades to come. We know these storms are coming, for we can clearly see their outlines and some are already beginning to feel the winds.
We don’t know the exact timing nor the order of these storms’ arrival. We do know that the order in which they come will be important to how these storms interact with what our lifestyles will be like in the years ahead.
[Link: Falls Church News-Press]
Tom Whipple at Falls Church News-Press is always a good read. Sometimes his observations on Peak Oil and the real future are humorous and sometimes not but they are always informative. This article is pretty direct and to the point as usual.
We are facing the four horsemen of the petrocollapse. Physical, geological depletion; political chaos due to the uneven distribution of supplies and consumption; catastrophic environmental effects from uncontrolled oil use, culminating in significant global climate change; and finally economic meltdown as the costs of a critical resource become astronomical. These four "storms" are brewing as we speak and their effects are visible to those who are willing to see. They will all probably become obvious to everyone within a generation. But, as Tom observes, the details are still up in the air. The riders are visible on the ridge, we still can't tell who will get here first.
[Link: WSJ.com]
The IPCC report predicts sea levels will rise by between one to two feet over the next 100 years. Mr. Delworth said there remains "much more uncertainty" over how much accelerated melting of glaciers might add to that.
A second area of continuing uncertainty has to do with the impact of clouds on climate change. Warming the ocean sends more water vapor into the air, and the resulting clouds accelerate global warming by trapping more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere and further warm the ocean. Jim Butler, deputy director of NOAA's global monitoring division, called this "a very scary feedback mechanism."
I must admit that I am surprised by what I am reading in this article. I have always thought that the rising water level was mostly the effect of adding melted ice and increased rainfall into the oceans. Increases due to the expansion of the water at higher temperatures seemed like it ought to be a secondary effect. Well...it seems that the reality of the situation is just the opposite. The UN report only considered expansion due to heating in the 1 to 2 foot increase in sea levels from Global Warming. The melting ice and effects of increased cloud cover weren't included because of the uncertainty.
I guess you do learn something every day. Today I learned to not trust your intuition when the phenomena you are considering is as complex as planetary physics. Tomorrow, I suspect we will learn that the seas are going to rise a lot more than we have been told so far.
Link: MiamiHerald.com | 02/01/2007
"That means the world's scientists are 90 to 99 percent certain that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible.
Worse, the study reportedly describes global warming as a runaway climatological train that already is racing down the track and will ``continue for centuries . . . even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized."
You know it really takes a lot to get people off of the mark nowadays. When I was a youngster, and the G.I.s were in charge, if a reasonable number of experts decided there was a serious problem looming on the horizon, well, then something would be done. It wasn't necessary for the train to cut your car in half before you might think about moving the car or getting out of it. When you were sitting on the track and heard a whistle, even if you couldn't see anything yet, you started getting your butt in gear.
I don't really know when that changed. It probably began picking up steam back in the Nixon days, when the Republicans and Conservatives started belittling the experts and educated people in general, claiming their book learning was somehow inferior to the "wisdom" of the common man. It certainly has been strengthened by the claim of the common man's press that the best way to extract knowledge about a subject is to listen to "experts" from the fringy, opposite ends of the subject's spectrum beat each other up with half truths and innuendos. True knowledge has no place in these discussions. The holders of true knowledge are aware of these extremes and try to filter them out of the mass of information in the center that actually holds the truth. The first thing a scientist does when he analyzes statistical data is to throw out the extreme data points, recognizing them for the oddballs that they probably are. We need to somehow get back to a point where we can react to reasonable concern when it shows it head and not argue about it until the whole monster crawls out of the hole.
We should have been on top of this 20 years ago and we might have had a chance to actually do something about it other than survive.
Link: New York Times
Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.
Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
As we desperately try to replace oil as a primary fuel for our civilization's transportation needs, this is going to be an ongoing story I'm afraid. Most high capacity agricultural projects are high impact operations. We have developed agricultural methods that are efficient and energy intensive. That is the way things are done today. But that is for food. The fuel industry is going to be added on top of the food industry. There will be no place safe from the gasoline farmers. Of course it will be an eco-nightmare. How could it not be.
Those of us who are convinced that hydrocarbon resources are in finite supply, and that we might be challenging the limits of its availability, are often reminded of the many flaws in our logic. For instance, we are encouraged to remember the power of the market. When the price of scarce hydrocarbons gets high enough more will appear. The invisible hand of Supply and Demand will guarantee that we can produce what we need. Maybe more expensive, but there. Others implore us to take into account the force of technology. The ingenuity of man will come through as it always has. Like the market, when there is a need there will be a solution.
This author however reminds us of another way that we have misjudged our predicament. It seems that the energy is there if only our poor energy companies were not throttled by the powerful government bureaucracies and all consuming environmental organizations. In other words, we are not short of energy resources, we are merely keeping ourselves from using it. He doesn't mention that we have had a national administration in power for six years that came from the oil industry and instead of tearing down those impenetrable barriers set up by the environmental juggernauts that control our country's resources they invaded a weak middle eastern country to insure our oil interests there. He also mentioned that we have not built a refinery in 30 years. I don't think he mentioned, however, that a refinery was proposed in the western United States last year and it wasn't built because, after getting all of the environmental approvals they needed, they couldn't find anybody that would guarantee a supply of oil that could be refined.
He is obviously unwilling to accept any restraints on our use of resources that might limit his lifestyle. If he could just roll back those pesky rules and regulations he would get us all the energy we would need. That may have made some sense a couple of decades ago, but I would think that the immediate threat of Global Warming would have been a strong enough signal that, hey, maybe the environmentalists have a point here.
